Leading in schools during a pandemic: Lessons Learned

With the light seeming to emerge as more and more individuals receive vaccines, leaders, and specifically school leaders need to evaluate lessons learned during the pandemic. From these lessons, we can identify how to move forward and how to make sure we are prepared for future crises in our educational landscape. Too often, educators find themselves focusing on the day-to-day fires and lacking the time or energy to focus on larger issues that can address long-term student and faculty needs. The pandemic forced us to look and evaluate our work but I fear we may just return to old habits if we do not stop to consider what we did and did not accomplish, as well as how to be better tomorrow. Much of what I am sharing below, we already knew before the pandemic but it has been highlighted tremendously during the past 11 months.

1. Teachers are incredibly resilient and resourceful. This is not a new lesson by any means. If you have been a teacher or watched a teacher work in a classroom with a group of students, you have witnessed magic happen. Teachers have been pivoting for decades when a lesson does not go as planned. Sometimes we need to be placed in a challenging situation, say a pandemic, for us to see this more clearly. I witnessed teachers seamlessly transition from in-person teaching to remote teaching last spring. They found new ways to deliver content and engage students. They managed to do this while working from home and teaching their own children. After three long months of remote teaching, they headed into the summer preparing for an uncertain fall semester. Many evaluated and updated their remote lessons. They looked at how to guide students in various models including remote, hybrid, and in-person. They participated in professional development opportunities to ensure they would be ready to give the students what they needed to be successful. As we approach one year of teaching and working in schools during a pandemic, it is abundantly clear that our teachers are some of the most resilient and resourceful people in the world. Now, we have to recognize how to harness these skills more fully when we can fully return to school. How can your teachers help you lead in your school? How can they support each other more consistently? This is not about simply adding more duties or responsibilities to their plates, it is about recognizing a skill set and helping them grow it. Give the teachers opportunities to demonstrate these skills consistently.
2. Teachers will burn out if you do not keep an eye on what you are asking of them or what they ask of themselves. By their very nature, educators are givers. They want to provide for their students and their colleagues. It is this trait that makes them excellent in the classroom and also what can drive them out of the classroom. The constant attention to detail on assignments on student experience on their craft leaves them with very little to give themselves. Teachers often tend to be their harshest critics as well. When you combine the additional work required to teach hybrid or remote with the isolation the pandemic has created, teachers are teetering on the brink. They need reminders to step back and take time for themselves. They need reminders that we cannot be perfect in an imperfect world. As they apply pressure to themselves, you as a leader need to look for the release valve and be sure not to add more. Sudden changes to schedules or plans may not have a large impact in a normal school day but we have not had a “normal” school day in nearly a year. The flexibility and understanding that usually exists can be hard to come by because of the overwhelming feelings that many educators experience on a daily basis. Questions are constantly spinning in their heads: Am I doing right by my students? Should I be more lenient or am I being too lenient? Am I putting my health at risk? When you add this stress onto their already demanding job, it can be a recipe for disaster. As school leaders, we need to check in with our people. If you are in a larger school and cannot see everyone, divide up teams and responsibility. Identify a subset of folks that you check in with as the leader and then have those individuals check in with another group of teachers or staff. When doing so, go beyond the general, how are you feeling? Because it will result in the general answer of “I’m fine” or “I’ll survive.” Deep down there are feelings of frustration, anger, despair and you need to see those and address them. According to a recent McKinsey & Company article, 75% of US employees report symptoms of burn out and there is a threefold increase in people rating their mental health as “very poor.”
3. Parents are grateful and wary of the instruction their children receive in a remote or hybrid setting. They are more involved than ever because they have the ability to see and hear what is happening in the classroom. They appreciate the work being done by their child’s teacher each day, especially if they are fortunate enough to have their child sitting in a classroom instead of at home. With this appreciation, comes questions and you need to be prepared for them. Why are the students not in the classroom on more days? What are you doing to make sure they are not behind next year? How are you providing opportunities for social interaction? Who is looking out for the emotional health and well-being of the students? The lack of consistent education in the spring of 2020 resulted in a honeymoon phase in the fall when schools reopened. Once parents realized it would not be a “normal” school year, these questions started to bubble to the surface. As a school leader, you need to be ready for these questions and have answers that align with your values as a school in the short term and long term. We can all agree that student health and safety is a top priority right now. How are you ensuring that and at what cost? If there are fewer classes available or less days on campus, that is a cost and needs to be addressed. How can you show what you are doing is working and how it is being evaluated? Parents are worried about their children and understandably so. It is your role as a school leader to address the concerns and provide honest information about what you are doing to support your students.
4. Be honest with yourself and others about your general mental health and well-being. Leading in a pandemic challenges us in so many ways and unfortunately, we can allow ourselves to develop bad habits and push away our team if we do not maintain or strengthen our awareness and EQ. According to Brenda Ellington Booth, there are four components that makeup EQ: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relational management. As a leader, you may feel compelled to show strength, stamina, and positivity at all times even when you do not have it. By hiding your struggle, you can unintentionally allow others to feel worse about themselves and their current situation. They are left to wonder why they cannot meet this unattainable standard you are setting. You are also not being honest with your faculty and staff which is not a healthy way to lead. It is appropriate to let people know that you have questions and concerns about your own wellness. You can share steps you have tried and failed to have work such as meditation, yoga, exercising, etc. You also need to be able to sit down and reflect on your own about your overall mental health well-being. Be honest about your needs and share them with your boss or fellow administrators. Ask them for support and information on how they are coping with the additional challenges we are all facing during this unique school year. If you have found ways to be positive and resilient, share those with people by explaining how it has helped you. Not everyone will use the same strategies or benefit from the same ideas. Be careful not to tell people, “you should do this…” or ask them “why hasn’t strategy X worked for you?” You have to maintain awareness of how you are interacting with your team and how they are perceiving your interactions.
5. When time or space avails itself, fill it in a meaningful way or it will be filled for you by someone else. We are hard-pressed to find time to complete the important tasks, not just the urgent tasks in a normal school day during a normal school year. That said, some meetings get canceled or schedule changes that provide you with “found time.” How one uses this found time is important because it can be wasted or it can be utilized for growth and resilience. I keep a small whiteboard with an Eisenhower Matrix on it and if I find myself with unscheduled time due to a meeting cancellation, I go there to see where I can focus for the next 30–45 minutes instead of just allowing myself to go down a rabbit hole of email. I will grab my hard copy calendar and look at specific events in the next few months that I can get a head start on planning. I will look for that article that I saved to read when I found time to do so. I will go for a walk around the campus and pop into rooms or stop to talk with folks I have not checked in with recently. If I do not take advantage of this found time and look for ways to move forward, I will slide backward and miss out on an opportunity.

So, where do we go from here with these lessons?

I suggest contemplating this quotation from Albert Einstein, “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” If we fail to continue moving, we can lose focus and agility which is required of us to support our mission, our students, and our faculty. Every year we see new opportunities to grow as leaders and we face new challenges. This past year we happened to face one that caught us off guard in the spring of 2020 and is still testing our resolve nearly one year later. As we look to move forward we have to understand that what began as a sprint has turned into a marathon. It requires us thinking long-term and big picture with focused steps along the way. We have to reflect on the lessons learned and use the experiences to propel us forward.

We have to find ways to maintain our resolve and seek positive thoughts. Jenn Nagy offers suggestions in this Dale Carnegie newsletter, Staying Positive Even When it Feels Impossible. It is important to keep in mind that promoting positive thinking can result in backlash for some leaders depending on how your team is feeling at the moment. It needs to be balanced, like everything in life, with a dose of reality. The experience you are having in your leadership role may not mirror the experience of your faculty and you can unintentionally make things worse if you do not stop and pay attention to what people are saying and expressing. You must demonstrate compassion and authenticity in conversations. US Navy Vice Admiral James Stockdale provides us with a guide in his lessons on bounded optimism from his time as a POW in Vietnam. You may have come across the Stockdale Paradox in the book Good to Great, by Jim Collins. Utilize your school’s mission and purpose to help navigate the challenges. Acknowledge the losses while focusing on what is still possible.

Ensure there is a focus on caring for the community, establish and maintain connections across the community and look for more opportunities to strengthen the well-being of individuals. As leaders, we must make this a priority within the framework of completing the mission. Show appreciation, celebrate wins, even small ones, and light the path forward.