Leading From The Heart

by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.

Category: Covid-19

  • Bridging the online / offline / simultaneous teaching gap

    Bridging the online / offline / simultaneous teaching gap

    In Quebec, all students are expected to be in school under normal ratios, that means the same teacher:student ratio in effect at a given school as before Covid-19. (I still find it mind-boggling that the exact same directive goes for schools in Montreal with over 29 000 cases of the virus as schools in the Lower Saint Lawrence, with 75 cases (as of the time of publication.) But that is the case.)

    Actually, that directive doesn’t apply to all students, some secondary schools can opt to create secondary 4 & 5 (Grades 10 & 11) groups that work online so as to facilitate regrouping of students for different course options though 50% of a student’s time must be at school.

    Ok. So what does that look like?

    I don’t have all of the answers to that question. But I know of at least one high school in the Greater Montreal area that is planning for simultaneous classes for their Secondary 4 & 5 courses. One teacher describes:

    I am teaching 1/2 of the group in class, while I am teaching the other 1/2 online, all at the same time. [Then the groups switch the next time she teaches that particular class]


    I also need to take 5 minutes to let cleaning product soak on my desk and then clean anything and everything I might touch, then clean my hands, then set up, then go online and add kids from the “lobby” waiting room and then teach in whatever is left over in the 60 min class that we have. Oh and I need 5 min to put my things together to change classrooms at the end.


    I am hopeful that when teachers need the support from the parents during contract negotiations, that we will get it.

    This teacher, like many others across Quebec, teaches 8 sections of different courses at different grade levels. Four of the sections will be organized like this, the other four are entirely face to face. Each of the groups are made up of 30 – 35 students and the students all stay in their base room most of the day so the teacher needs to move from class to class.

    Pause a bit and let the logistics of all of that sink in.

    This is far from ideal. But what can we do? There aren’t enough teachers for the start of the year as it is. And even if there were more teachers available – the government has directed the same class ratios as normal so schools can only hire 1 teacher per whatever that ratio is for them. In high school the maximum number of students per class is supposed to be 32 but it can go higher (I have seen a class of 47 at Secondary 3…) and in certain cases the max is set lower.

    To be clear. Simultaneous teaching does NOT equal smaller class sizes. The teacher is still responsible for all of the students and his or her attention is now divided between multiple spaces. Have you ever done something on your phone or computer while someone in the room is talking to you? Think about teaching that way… Regardless. We know that the teacher will make it work, that is what teachers do, right?

    So how can we make this easier?

    I’d likely treat the whole class as if they were all learning online. That way I wouldn’t need to create two versions of a lesson plan for my online learners and my in class learners. I’d create learning that can be accessed from anywhere and completed in a variety of ways. That way if each of my in class students didn’t have a device of some sort, they can still do the ‘online’ activities as I project it on my whiteboard (interactive white board or not). And if we all need to jump online at one point in the school year, the material will already be there.

    So what would this look like?

    I use Google, so I’d make a site like these ones and organize the activities and instructions so that they can be completed either at home or in the classroom. The syllabus and schedule would be available on the site but I’d likely also use Google Classroom as a communication platform so students can submit and receive feedback on their assignments.

    Social Media and Me – course designed by Caroline Mueller, PhD, teacher at Place Cartier Adult Education Center, Lester B Pearson School Board.
    Site for a unit on personal identity – designed by me and used in a variety of settings with students, teachers, and student-teachers.

    Students could access this no matter where they happen to be located during the lesson. I’d probably also make sure that when the groups are with me, I’d divide them up into even smaller groups so I can teach them a mini-lesson, ask and answer questions, conference with them, assess them…whatever but in smaller groups (socially distanced) so I can have a handle on formative assessment and touch base with each of them regularly during this incredibly weird school year.

    This might look like teaching in stations, where certain stations can only happen in the classroom. Or, if you teach students who will ALWAYS be at home, certain groups have independent work while you conference with small groups, maybe using a breakout room in Zoom or Meet or a different channel in Teams.

    Accessibility & Inclusion

    Another benefit of putting everything in one online place is that it creates more accessibility in general. No need to provide digital copies of something for students who need it as per their IEP (individual learning plan) … it’s there already. No need to provide students who miss a class with your presentation or notes … it’s already there. No need to create something new each time someone may need an accommodation or need to miss class for whatever reason. And, once again, if school goes online for all, my materials will already be there.

    Relationship & Community

    And if everyone accesses their class material via the online platform, then that can help to create a class community where everyone is included in the same way no matter where they happen to be located. This can go a long way to developing the teacher/student relationship that is so needed, especially this year, yet may seem so far away when we are behind masks, in different rooms, in different buildings.

  • A back-to-school like no other

    A back-to-school like no other

    On Thursday morning, someone from CBC News contacted me for a live interview later that afternoon. It was to talk about back-to-school in Quebec and concerns from a teaching perspective. It ended up being cancelled, I think Rob Ford bumped me on Thursday and something else did on Friday. These things happen.

    Before they cancelled, I spent the day thinking about what I would say because this year’s back-to-school is entangled with confusion, worry, anger, fear, hope, and love. I wanted to speak with clarity.

    I also asked some friends who are returning to the classroom in a few days what they would say, knowing that it would remain anonymous.

    I am not the only one with such mixed feelings and I feel I need to do something with what everyone told me.

    Here are some of the worries my teacher friends told me, in frantic text messages and phone calls, in between preparing for teaching in a pandemic. These are high school and elementary school teachers in the Greater Montreal area, from both the French and the English systems:

    • Class sizes are too large! (edit: each teacher I spoke with mentioned this)
    • We have 500+ students – today (Thursday) we saw parents and children outside of the French school for their first morning, hugging, no masks, no distancing. The same thing will happen here! How will this affect my class bubble?
    • I don’t feel I know all of the different rules we now have. Will I be blamed if children get sick?
    • We are missing teachers! One teacher decided to retire on Tuesday because she is over 60 and worried. It’s a day before school starts and the board still hasn’t let us replace her (edit: there is a process…). Who is going to set up that classroom for the children?
    • Not enough cleaning supplies!
    • Our day is longer by 30 minutes because of concerns with busing! Not sure if our principal should be able to do that – but that is what happened!
    • Inconsistencies between school directives. We have been told back to business as usual within classrooms, where other schools are physically distancing. 
    • My friend who teaches in another school has 15 children in her classroom. I have 28. How is this fair? She can keep her students away from each other, I can’t.
    • Some schools have given each room PPE, others nothing yet. 
    • Plexi being ordered for some, others nothing. They’ve created a have/have nots between the schools.
    • Imagine other government employees making/providing safe work space and PPE for themselves.
    • No definitive plan of action for what takes place if a COVID case is confirmed in any given school: is that school closed down for two weeks?
    • What about COVID pay? 6 sick days will be used up pretty damn quickly.
    • Before we even started we have some teachers in my school out and isolating. What will happen now that the children are here?
    • I worry that others think I am overreacting. But I am afraid to get sick.
    • I won’t see my parents this year, they are in their 80s.
    • We spent most of our day washing hands. I hope this goes faster as we get used to it. I did not become a teacher to spend the day walking my students to wash their hands.
    • We are missing teachers. Two classes in my school had a substitute teacher today, on their first day back since March!! I felt so bad for those children.
    • I work in 3 schools. This doesn’t make sense!
    • Zero mention/focus on mental health & well-being. 
    • No media blitz for how school might feel different upon the return.
    • It is hard to keep the children away from each other when they see their friends! I am worried.
    • Why can’t we delay the start a couple of days so teachers would have time to help get the school in order AND get ready for our actual jobs? Why don’t we have school-based committees for that?
    • Why is the minister of education allowed to have different health and safety rules for the teachers versus every other business in Quebec?
    • Why is money being spent on convincing people to go back to school, rather than spending money to make school safer?
    • I am busy preparing my room and the hallways for Covid protocol. I haven’t had a chance to prepare to teach and to welcome my children, who haven’t been in school since March!
    • I miss the kids. So much. I just don’t know how I will teach them properly because I am so worried. There are 33 children on my class list, last year I had 24. This doesn’t make sense.
    • I feel we are putting a lot of energy into preparing for back-to-school and we will just end up closing after a month because our class sizes are too big and we have no social distancing or masks. I am already so tired. How will I have the energy to move online?

    I always feel hope and love for teaching because we do what needs to be done for the children in our care. Sometimes, that is tinged with frustration and anger because it is expected of us even when our conditions are subpar – when the class sizes grow larger and the resources dwindle each year.

    But this year, I am so angry that teachers are put in the position to try to make confusing and potentially dangerous policy bearable because we always put children first.

    I am not returning to the classroom this year. I had returned last year after about six years away. But this year, I left for a position where I can work from home and keep my 9 year old son with me just in case. Because I am also worried about all of those things the teachers told me above. I lived all of those worries last year. So did my son. And because online learning is only being made available to a slim list of people with specific medical conditions, I will likely start homeschooling in September (Yes, in two days. And yes, I am still considering options…). It is the only solution right now that can guarantee consistency because there are so many inconsistencies with back-to-school this year. And it is sad that we will likely need to leave the system for that.

    I also feel sad when I see teachers posing in their masks and face shields inside their classrooms that they are preparing for 25+ children to spend their days not wearing masks. Not social distancing. We can’t have 25 people in a SAQ at the same time …. even with masks and with social distancing!

    The masks can hide the trembling smiles at least. I feel like schools are the band that plays while the Titanic sinks and this will have an impact on mental wellness. Teachers hold emotion for themselves, their colleagues, and their students. This year, the task is downright dystopic. Our government continues to insist that the best place for children is at school. But the current directives lack not only empathy but a reflection of current knowledge about this virus. The directives are inconsistent and school staff don’t have the time to make sense of them, not to mention what they are going to teach and how they are going to connect with their students who have been away from school for so long.

  • Well-being of children and opening schools

    Yesterday afternoon, the Quebec government announced the reopening of schools during this current worldwide pandemic.

    Last week, they suggested as much, citing herd immunity as a main reason. But over the weekend, perhaps in response to Dr. Theresa Tam’s statement about the practice, they changed their reason why. In fact, they replaced it with 5 reasons why and made sure to underline that herd immunity was no longer the driving force behind the reopening of schools.

    Here are the 5 reasons why, as presented by Premier Legault (these are notes I took during the press conference on April 27. Here is Legault’s Facebook post, in French, that outlines the same points)

    1 – Well-being of children. Especially for those with learning disabilities. (Asking teachers to pay special attention to children who are having difficulties).
    2- The risk is limited for children. Children with health problems or who have parents with health problems, parents should keep them home.
    3 – The situation is under control in hospitals so if children and teachers get sick we can treat them.
    4 – We have the go ahead from public health (earlier I had read that M. Arruda, the director general of public health had wanted to wait another week but I can no longer find that reference)
    5 – Life has to continue, children should see their friends and teachers again. I don’t see children staying at home until a vaccine is ready in 12 or 18 months

    Calls herd immunity a secondary benefit.
    We are reopening our schools for social reasons and because the situation is under control in hospitals. (Legault)

    School is to be optional and teachers are expected to teach those who choose to be in school and follow up with those at home. (Roberge)

    For the past 3 weeks of the 5 weeks we have been out of school, we have sent links to activities that could be completed at home at a family’s discretion. We will continue to do so until we return on the 19th (in Montréal, still considered the epicenter in Quebec as of last week, and if the situation in the hospitals does not change), all the while preparing our classrooms for face to face teaching in a pandemic. Some teachers have also connected with their students in other ways, through Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or other platforms.

    If schools do reopen on the 19th, we will still be asked to connect in those ways all the while caring for the children who come to school in very unusual circumstances – 2 metre distancing in classes, recess, etc… and with no protective gear provided or mandated for staff or children. Some students and teachers won’t be present because of age or underlying health issues. This is not a return to school as it was nor is it a return to school for everyone.

    Premier Legault said that we are reopening our schools for social reasons and that the number one reason is for the well-being of children.

    There are vast options for nurturing our students, for providing for their well-being, that lie between the sending home of un-monitored schoolwork and the opening up of classrooms. Online learning can be a safe, caring space if we plan for it.

    We can work with small groups, in a stations approach. Colleagues can manage these small groups together, sharing the load and learning together. A group can work with the French teacher while the other works with the English teacher and then they switch. A resource teacher can also be at another group, to keep the groups as small as possible because we know that the smaller the group, the more opportunities each group member has to ask questions and express themselves. Resource or technology teachers and consultants can accompany teachers as we experiment with new solutions. As I wrote the other day, this is possible with tools that are made available to us by our government and our school boards.

    Yesterday, our Education Minister, Jean-François Roberge, promised LTE equipped tablets for students and families in need for distance learning. This begins to address the issues of equity and accessibility that worry me and can help to make this kind of online work accessible to more learners.

    I can already imagine all of the arguments against this kind of thing – in my previous career as a technology consultant for the Province, I heard them all! The reality is, if we put the arguments aside and try, we will find that it works.

    I am not suggesting that this can replace the kind of learning environments we had in our classrooms before we shut down but we won’t be returning to those spaces if we return on the 19th anyways. It won’t be business as usual. It won’t be equitable with some students and teachers in the buildings, some at home. I am scared and worried. Others are scared and worried. How will our children react? My son wants to return to school so he can play with his friends … But he won’t be able to play with them unless they are 2 metres apart so he is scared and worried. We can create safe, nurturing, closer to equitable learning environments online if we all stay home, like our Federal (and Provincial!) government suggests.

    (Of course, today Legault will be announcing the plan to reopen businesses… Was the well-being of children really the driving force?)

  • Learning (or should we call it connecting?) Online in Troubled Times

    Yes. Especially at this tumultuous (yet, for some lucky people, incredibly boring) point in time, we need to be talking about connection when it comes to learning. (When I say connect, I mean primarily as in human connection but also as in infrastructure.)

    Connecting Online in Troubled Times.

    There have been a whole new slew of online meeting and learning memes since we have started to work and school from home. Most of them refer to either inappropriate dress (or lack thereof altogether…) in meetings or the extreme boredom, exhaustion, and frustration of them. I could include a ton of pictures of actual online meeting fails…but they involve real people and my friend Avi reminded me how sad it is for them to be reminded of their fails all the time, so here’s a joke video that pretty much sums them up.

    But we have a desire to connect, a desire to connect to some kind of normalcy in these very un-normal times so we try to be productive online. Meetings, classes, more meetings, more classes. If we just continue as usual, but online, then we can quasi pretend that we aren’t going through traumatic life shifts. That not only “everything will be alright“, but it is alright.

    I hear from some parents, “If only teachers would teach online, that will solve things for me and my children!” I hear from our Ministry of Education (though the last I heard from them was quite a while back…), education consultants, and PD presenters, “Here are lists (and lists and lists and lists) of things you can do to make learning happen. To solve things for those parents asking for solutions.” And so teachers forward these lists to parents weekly but they say, “No! We don’t want lists of things to do, we want…online teaching! We want you to do your jobs in our homes!”

    It is all very exhausting and overwhelming. I started tuning the lists out a few weeks ago. At this point there are soooooo many lists that whenever I do need an idea I can just Google what I need and I’ll be ok. But as more of my own learning and connecting experiences are taking place online (and I used to do a lot of online learning and connecting in my former job!) the exhaustion is returning.

    For the most part, these experiences are presenter focused. That is, a very traditional lecture-based presentation….despite the possibilities that online learning has for connection, collaboration, and interaction.

    Last year, I experimented with working in stations during online PD sessions and I find myself reflecting on those experiences now.

    The magic of online stations (which are very doable with breakout rooms in Zoom or Via ‘ateliers’ and even manageable with multiple Meet rooms) is the same as the magic of classroom stations work: the relationship and connection that is created when working with small groups of learners.

    At this point in history, after months (in some cases) of being apart, connection needs to be the driving force of online learning – whether for professional development or for student development. We can’t just throw content at our students or participants. We need to design opportunities for them to connect with us, with each other, and with the material.

    Some of our students have suffered great loss with sick and dying relatives. Some of our students are alone at home with parents who work at home, yet are in another room for much of the day. Some of our students can’t meet with us online because they don’t have the tech to do so. Or they can’t meet with us because their parents work in essential services and they are at emergency daycare services. All of our students are grieving the loss of their friends, their lives, their fun, their experiences during this forced time at home. Many of them are scared of this loss and of this virus (and so are we.) We can’t ignore these very real facts.

    Consider this when arranging to meet with your students or teachers online. How are they connecting with you and with their peers? Are you muting them all because it is just too noisy (and taking away their means to connect and express)? Or are you planning for small group work that they will do in separate meeting rooms so that they can talk with each other and the presenters and not be overwhelmed by 20+ learners talking at the same time? Are you making sure that you have time to connect with each of the small groups so they can ask questions or say things that they may not be brave enough to utter in a large group?

    This works. I know because I have lived it a variety of levels. And if you can do this with teaching partners, it works even better because each of the small online breakout rooms can have a teacher to guide the conversations and check in with students. And the bonus is that we teachers get to support and connect with each other as well as we, in turn, support our students and their families in these very troubled times.

    We are not teaching. We are connecting.

  • Caring for each other and being safe. It’s ok to take a break from school learning.

    In Quebec, teachers have been told not to teach while the schools are closed for this initial 2-week period (it is hard to believe it has been less than a week that the schools have been closed!):

    “Teachers, as per the Minister of Education’s statements today, will not be providing work to students over the two week school closure period. As he stated, teachers will work with their students to catch-up when schools re-open.” From this EMSB Director General update on March 13, 2020.

    These directives will be updated as of March 27 but for now, this is how it stands.

    Over the past few days, a number of people have asked me for suggestions regarding homeschooling their children. Some parents are angry that teachers aren’t immediately creating Google classrooms and skype lessons so they are asking – what should we do?

    For a little while there, at the onset, I was sharing lists of free resources for learning at home but after about a day, I stopped.

    Why did I stop? It was getting to be too much. There are SO MANY lists floating around that I realized – wait. It almost feels like education resource companies (educational technology, textbook, evaluations, etc…) are creating a false sense of panic. This escalated sharing of lists and resources of free (for now) resources started to remind me of people grabbing up as much toilet paper as they could.

    So what have I been doing since then? My response is now always the same. Read. Read alone and read together.

    Readers create thinkers but even more important reading together creates feelings of care and security. We need to build those feelings up right now.

    Reading together can be an adult reading to children, children reading to adults or to each other, or everyone listening to stories together through their library’s audio books (Quebec’s library, the BANQ, has TONS of audio books in English and in French), Storyline Online, Boukili (en francais, for little ones), or from any of the many, many wonderful authors who have begun to read to us over the Internet.

    If you are working from home, book (ha ha) reading time before or after work. And while you are working? It is more than ok if your children play. Play also helps to increase feelings of security and as an added bonus it is important in brain development.

    Imagine for now if each of your child’s teachers sent home work to do. Now reflect on that scenario with multiple children. And now reflect on that scenario for people with no access to a computer at home for each of those children to work. And now imagine all of the screen time that this will entail. Here is one woman’s heart-felt response as she lives this reality. In fact, this is the video that inspired this article.