In this Safeguarding Podcast we discuss the issues for online safety that COVID19 has brought to Saratoga High School, USA. Principal Greg Louie discusses how his school has adapted to the challenges for the online safety of children while remote learning, how disadvantaged children are helped, the EdCode, WASC vs Ofsted and how teachers themselves need to adapt to the new world of “blended learning”.
There’s a lightly edited for legibility transcript below for those that can’t use podcasts, or for those that simple refer to read.
Neil Fairbrother
Welcome to another edition of the SafeToNet Foundation’s safeguarding podcast, hosted by me, Neil Fairbrother, where we talk about all things to do with safeguarding children in the online digital context.
Child safeguarding in the online digital context is at the intersection of technology law and ethics and culture, and it encompasses all stakeholders between a child using a smartphone and the content or person online that they are interacting with.
Children around the world have had their lives and education disrupted by the COVID19 lockdown and joining me today to talk about his school’s experience is Principal of Saratoga High School in California USA, Greg Louis. Thanks for joining us on the podcast.
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
Hello, thank you for having me.
Neil Fairbrother
It’s my pleasure. Can you give us a brief resumé Greg of your background, so our listeners from around the world, understand a little bit more about you.
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
Sure, definitely. So I have been in education for about 22 years. After College I started teaching at Silver Creek High School in San Jose. I served as Activities Director, an English teacher, a science teacher and football and baseball coach. And after about seven years I became the Assistant Principal in charge of safety and discipline and attendance at Santa Teresa high school and I did that for four years. And after that, I also then became the Assistant Principal in charge of Education for almost four years, still at Santa Teresa High School, before I was appointed Principal in March of 2012 at Santa Teresa High School. So I spent about 15 years at Santa Teresa and then this past July 2019, I transferred over to Saratoga High School and I’ve been Principal for Saratoga High School now for a year.
Neil Fairbrother
Okay. Well, congratulations on your anniversary in strange circumstances, I’m sure you never imagined a year ago that you would be facing this situation. So Saratoga High School is I think what we might call a secondary school in the UK. What age range do you educate and what are the qualifications that your students gain at the end of their time with you?
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
So our school addresses students who are in ninth through 12th grade, they are typically 14 years of age is the youngest freshmen up to 18 years of age, typically for our seniors. When they finish high school with us, they get a Diploma and the success rate of our students here at Saratoga is very high, so many of them are eligible to go on to universities immediately out of high school. They have a history of being pretty successful while they’re there at school earning their bachelor’s degrees.
Neil Fairbrother
Cool. Excellent. Now, can you tell us whereabouts you are in the COVID19 lockdown cycle? Are you locked down? Are you in a second lockdown? Are you coming out of lockdown? Whereabouts are you?
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
In our community there was a shelter in place that started back in March 13th, and then recently they lifted some of the restrictions where the recommendations are to social distance as much as possible or wear your masks. And then the Governor a few days ago added restrictions again to certain places and environments because some people in our community we’re not necessarily following the best rational thought about maintaining social distance and wearing a mask and staying home if they’re feeling ill. And as you probably seen in the news, then the numbers have gone up in our State and through our country in terms of people getting sick and needing to be hospitalized and so on.
Personally things are good for us, myself and my family. I get to come into work and be sequestered in my office most of the time and afterwards go back home and spend time with my family. And so we don’t necessarily get to go out too much anymore, but you know, we’re doing our part to try to stay healthy.
Neil Fairbrother
Good. Excellent. Now, many schools have implemented remote learning often via video conferencing platforms, such as Zoom. Is that something that you’ve done and has it been successful?
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
Yes, our school district when, again, when the school closures started back in March, our teachers sort of went into crisis mode and triaged and they use Zoom and they use Google Meets. Some of my teachers use Discord, so we had a variety of different platforms that teachers were using to meet online with their students and to deliver instruction or to check for understanding. So it’s something we’re unfortunately going to be continuing to do when we start school again in August, continuing to go with a remote learning platform until we have clearance to be able to start bringing more and more students back to campus.
Neil Fairbrother
Yeah. What percentage of attendance has there been Greg with the online teaching, online classrooms, and if pupils don’t attend, how do you sanction them, or how do you indeed encourage them rather than sanction?
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
Well there are two parts. So the first part is attendance-wise Saratoga is very special. So a lot of our students still participated and engaged with the distance learning in the Spring before Summer. For those students who are not engaged or did not connect, we had staff members who would reach out to them and contact them and contact their families to see if there was a technological reason and if there was, we would figure out a way to provide them something.
If it was more of a choice or if a situation where parents were under the impression that their student was on top of things, then at least having the conversation with the adults gave them a more realistic of what their children were doing. We did end up with a few dozen students who are difficult to reach and were not as successful online as they were in real life education. But overall the students here did really well. And again, it’s a very special place.
Neil Fairbrother
Okay. In the UK, the Education and Inspections Act of 2006, gives the Headteacher or the Principal of the school powers to regulate the behaviour of pupils when they are off school premises. And also empowers members of the staff to impose disciplinary penalties for inappropriate online behaviour, whether the pupil is at home or indeed at school. Do you have similar responsibilities and powers? Can teachers, can the educational staff, get involved in pupils’ online behaviour when they are off premises or at home?
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
So if you had asked me that question six months ago, I might’ve said that we were limited to school hours, or the way that the Ed Code reads is basically to or from school in some respects. Now that we’re on distance learning and remote learning it definitely opens the door a little bit more that if a student wants to do something inappropriate online, whether it was like a “Zoom bomb” during a class time or if they were doing something in the form of cyberbullying, it gives us a little bit more jurisdiction because our school borders are obviously so much broader in terms of what we can do now.
In terms of discipline, you know, there’s not a lot in our bag of tricks of what we can with traditional discipline. When school was in session, there was maybe an after-school detention, or maybe we suspended a student and sent them home. If it was extreme, right, we could go for expulsion and keep them at home. But when they’re already at home, threatening them with a suspension or expulsion is sort of silly.
So in some respects, again, it’s a matter of documentation and having conversations with the student and the families and pointing out their transgressions to make sure that they understand that what they’re doing is a violation and the consequences could get worse if we had to pursue them. Again, Saratoga is special that the opportunity for being inappropriate or doing certain things is significantly less than my experience at other places, just because again, Saratoga students are overall again, just gifted young adults who are much more focused on their schoolwork overall. There’s some of the teenage stuff that they still do, but again, not to the extremes as others in some cases.
Neil Fairbrother
Well, teenagers are teenagers. So you’ve not found yourself having to take any special measures against any of your pupils, any corrective measures, or to put your metaphorical, digital arm around them to guide them with the online behaviours?
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
For a specific online behaviours, no. With regards to academic integrity. Yeah. There were a handful of times where because again, they’re home much more, the evidence of them plagiarizing or copying and pasting, or sharing each other’s work was something we had to spend more time on when working with them and discussing them with about.
Neil Fairbrother
Okay, I know you briefly mentioned this, but I’d just like to ask you specifically on this one. Do all of your pupils have suitable access to online services in the way of broadband and WIFI and or suitable data plans on their smartphones? And if not, then what specifically have you done? You briefly mentioned that you would help them, but in what way? Do you provide devices?
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
So yeah, Saratoga is an affluent community, so a large majority of our students and their families have the devices and the broadband network to be able to do what they need to do. For those few who don’t, we loan them Chromebooks. We loan them WIFI hotspots so they can be able to do things that they needed to do. But again, this is a unique environment. This isn’t a normal, typical Bay area, high school let alone a, you know, American high school.
Neil Fairbrother
So outside of Saratoga, what might happen? Would for example, an underprivileged family who may not be able to afford these things, would they have to go without education, or is there some kind of State intervention there?
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
A lot of the school districts in the former school district that I came from, they tried to do everything they could to get technology and WIFI hotspots into the hands of families and students that needed them and wanted them. But with that, though, some of the challenges are also just the mindset where some students who maybe didn’t have access to certain things, maybe they also saw this as an opportunity to not be held responsible academically, and therefore weren’t necessarily cooperating with trying to get devices or using their WIFI access.
So some of it, again, I think was a choice in some respects for some students and their families, or not necessarily ours, but for some students and families. But again, in my experience a lot of the school districts try to what they could do to provide. But it’s a daunting task depending upon the economy.
Neil Fairbrother
The “Stop hate for profit” movement is a high profile campaign, which you’re probably aware of, by advertisers on social media platforms, mostly Facebook as it happens and it’s designed to put pressure on Facebook to address hate speech online. Does hate speech on social media cause any particular issues for your pupils, or indeed staff?
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
Nothing significant recently. As you know, in our country, there’s been a lot of racial issues and concerns that have come up that are being exposed and debated and a lot of different groups that are trying to advocate for what’s best for others. And so we do have a group of students who I am working with to develop anti-racist practices and to look at healthy relationships so we can be able to then provide an environment for our students where they can feel safe regardless of their backgrounds. And then that way too, we can educate our community and try to be that ripple effect where our students then start to show others how to treat each other with empathy and humanity.
Neil Fairbrother
In the UK smartphones or cell phones, haven’t been banned in schools, at least by the Government, but other countries have. France, for example, has banned smartphones from schools, at least they can be taken into schools under special circumstances. They can’t use their telephones inside the school grounds or at a school-based activity outside of school, such as a sporting event, not that we have sporting events at the moment. They can’t connect any device to the school network while on the school grounds. How do you manage the pupils’ use of smartphones? Do you permit them onto the premises? Are you able to ban them from use in schools or, or how do you manage it?
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
When we’re in school session, students can have their mobile devices with them. They can take them into classes. They can use them during the breaks and lunches outside. It’s the prerogative of the teacher in terms of how they manage that in the classroom. Many of the teachers have established rules where cell phones need to be put away and out of sight, out of mind. Some teachers also embrace the mobile devices and they’ll use online assessment programs to be able to then have the students you know, play some games like Cahoot or something of that nature, to be able to look at how they learn things and us a mobile device and again, sort of appreciate the technology that’s in their hands.
I’m not personally in favour of banning a device that we know isn’t going to go away, that we know inevitably as part of their DNA and students know, teenagers know, when to use them when not to use them. So, you know, if they’re in a movie theatre or if they’re in church, if they’re in places where they understand that that’s the expectation, they know to put them away, they know not to touch them.
In classrooms where they’re bored and they’re not feeling like they’re getting a good use of their time they’re going to find something else to do and it’s no different than any other adults. So I’m a firm believer that it’s our responsibility to teach them the appropriate protocol and the appropriate use of it. And so that way it takes that translation when they get to be older and they go into the workforce or college. To ban it, I think is kicking the can down the road and it’s not being responsible in our role as providing that opportunity.
Neil Fairbrother
Now in the UK, we have a phenomenon that we know as Countylines, where children are coerced often through online extortion into carrying drugs, through and across counties, hence the name Countylines. This is a phenomenon that you’re familiar with in the US, does it take place?
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
I’m not familiar with it. I wouldn’t say that it doesn’t take place. If it happens in your country, I’m sure it happens here, it happens everywhere, you know, but I’m not familiar with it personally.
Neil Fairbrother
The famous yellow school bus, I think is a universal global symbol of the American education system. We had a very tragic case of a boy that was bullied in part on the daily school bus run and the driver, I believe even ended up participating in the building of this young boy who in the end, very sadly took his own life, I think he 11 years old, what safeguarding responsibilities do the bus drivers have in the US
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
The story you describe is tragic. The fact that anybody’s going to take their lives, especially an 11 year old, that’s an awful thing. Our bus drivers, typically, at least in my experience with my last district and with this district, their primary responsibility is to keep their eyes on the road and make sure the students are transported safely from point A to point B.
There’s no reason why they should be participating with the students in any form, whether it’s positive or negative, socially when their prime responsibility is to drive. If they hear something, if they observe something, obviously there’s an expectation that they report it. And all of our educating staff are considered mandated reporters. So if they see anything that is putting a child at risk, their responsibility is to report it. Whether it goes through authorities or to child protective services, again, depending upon what they see or hear, it just depends.
In our communities, especially San Jose, where I worked at Saratoga, the yellow buses now are relatively reserved to special needs families or students who have special needs to get to and from different schools. So now you’re taking a special population even more so with just the driver and I had advocated in my last district that there’d be a driver and another adult on the bus so that, that second adult could be the one who helps to observe and supervise our special needs students to make sure that something doesn’t happen, something’s not said inappropriate to be able to protect our children as much as possible.
Neil Fairbrother
That would make a lot of sense. Now, when it comes to online behaviours, you’ve mentioned cyberbullying. Another one that you may will be familiar with is sexting. Some of these online behaviours don’t actually have a legal definition, cyberbullying for example, doesn’t actually have a legal definition, I don’t think it does even in the US it certainly doesn’t here. But a lot of the behaviours that make up cyberbullying do have legal definitions.
So for example a “…course of conduct amounting to harassment of another person” in the UK that fits under the Protection from Harassment Act of 1997. And we even have a law from 1861, which applies, the Offenses Against the Person Act, which describes a “credible threat to kill”. And you can imagine that when somebody is cyberbullying, gets really aggressive, someone may say, “I’m going to kill you, I’m going to come around and sort you out.” Do you think that cyberbullying should have a legal definition, if so what that help the management of it?
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
I think we have pretty clear parameters in my experience through California Ed Code in terms of cyberbullying and terroristic threats and harassment and stuff like that. So, as you said, I mean, there’s the general term of bullying, which pretty broadly covers the various forms of harassment and intimidation and the cyberbullying part is essentially a sub bullet of it all.
So when we get evidence that something is happening, we do have some opportunities to be able to address it and to pursue consequences. The hard part about it sometimes is not knowing the full picture. And oftentimes what ends up happening is we get some evidence that suggests that student A has been cyberbullying student B, and just on that evidence and makes student a look very guilty. But sometimes we dig deeper and we find out the student B’s the one who essentially started it and student A just basically lost their cool and started responding and retaliating.
And so oftentimes it’s really important that we do our due process, that we do an investigation, and we try to dig as deep as we can to find where the root of the cause started from, and then address it from there. And again, depending upon the severity, if there’s some obvious threats, if there’s some obvious concern for safety, we also notify the local authorities and then they have a lot more space to be able to get some additional information and to dig even deeper than we might be able to.
But the hardest part, like I said is the opportunity to have evidence and the difference between cyberbullying and bullying on campus, we might observe or see the bullying on campus. We might be able to from our own perspective describe what we’ve seen and to be able to go from there.
We sometimes we don’t know about the cyberbullying until again, a parent or a peer has brought it to our attention and by then some time has gone on that again makes it hard for us to get down to the root. So it’s definitely a big challenge. But it’s a situation where, again, without having a staff member who’s dedicated to searching everyone’s social media accounts and reading what’s going on, we’re very much at the mercy of peers who advocate for their friends or for parents who somehow come across that information to be able to then help us help them.
Neil Fairbrother
Well, yes, talking about rummaging through social media accounts, Apple famously or infamously, depending on your point of view, took a very hard line about not providing a digital backdoor into their devices, even for perpetrators of extremely devastating crimes, such as someone who’s committed a mass shooting, for example. Do you think that that absolute privacy is the right way to go, or should there be some kind of backdoor so that you can get more easily to the root of these communication issues?
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
You know, I can see both perspectives, honestly. It’s a tremendously slippery slope, because when you leave that back door open, as you’re describing, the concern I’m sure is whether or not people with legitimate or illegitimate intentions are spying and looking through other people’s things. And so again, I think it’s such a slippery slope in terms of what’s people’s liberties and freedoms in some respects.
I think, again, it goes back to the point of how do we get ahead of it in the future of being proactive? How do we teach our students and our children about how to communicate, on how to advocate for themselves and how to share, even just in terms of the protocols where some of the different social media platforms, they don’t leave a history in some respects, and so having screenshots when they see them and to be able to then again, advocate for a peer or advocating for themselves, or better yet to recognize that social media isn’t necessarily an opportunity to hide behind a screen and to tell people how you feel about them.
If we can teach our students to use social media in positive ways and an educational ways, right, we start to eliminate the problem before the problem even starts. And I think that’s really where our efforts should be going towards versus trying to figure out how you catch somebody afterwards.
Neil Fairbrother
Would it be useful do you think if children were formerly taught online media rights and online law?
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think it’s as important as learning to drive and having a license to drive and have a license to own a weapon. In this day and age, I think there should be, again, this is just me but there should be some consideration for certification of being able to use social media platforms.
And again, for those of us who are older and for those groups, maybe they’re grandfathers did, but for younger kids who are starting to come into understanding that level of education I think is critical. And again, it doesn’t necessarily infringe upon anybody’s rights in my opinion, but it does let them know what they’re entitled to do and what their responsibilities are. And it also I think holds them accountable when they choose to step across those lines.
Neil Fairbrother
Yes. You mentioned having a weapon, which is a very different culture to the one in the UK and we read about and see on the news, the tragic school shootings. Does the use of social media contribute to those kind of events or not?
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
It’s definitely possible that social media contributes to school shootings, if I think that’s what you’re asking. Any form of harassment and bullying and intimidation that then affects people mentally and affects people socially, if they have the means to hurt other people, sometimes they’re going to lash out and they’re going to hurt other people. So I personally think that there’s definitely a correlation between it.
If we look at all of the different times that there’s been some form of a shooting going all the way back to Columbine in some respects, it’s always tended to lean back towards those who’ve been harassed and oppressed and bullied. You know, mental health has definitely been a part of it and access to weapons, obviously being the ultimate. So again, it goes back to my point of the fact that if we can educate our students about their responsibilities and that the power of the word is just as powerful as a stick or a stone, right? The old adage of sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me, that’s all changed. Words are just as dangerous if not worse because of the scars that they leave internally, that people don’t see.
Neil Fairbrother
That’s for sure. In the UK, we have a government department called Ofsted, the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills, and they report to Parliament and they are responsible for school inspections. They inspect a range of educational institutions, state schools, and some independent schools as well. Do you have a similar inspection regime in the US?
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
In some respects, yes. We have our Western Association of Schools and Colleges. The acronym is WASC and they come over and they do an audit of the school essentially. The process includes the school, doing a self-study themselves, looking at their academic data, the behaviour data, the different cultural responsibilities, things that are going on in the school site to reflect upon what it is that the school needs to continue to do to continue to improve and be their best selves.
Then this group sends a visiting team, usually about a half a dozen or so people from different educational institutions with different backgrounds, to then come and look to see if the self-study that the school created matches to what they observe and see when they come to visit. And again, it could be everything from academic success to social cultural relationships between students and teachers and students to students, professional development practices, et cetera.
Neil Fairbrother
Okay. Is the inspection regime, do you think, adequately knowledgeable of online harms to offer schools useful and practical and realistic advice and guidance as to what best practices you might put in place?
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
No, unfortunately they’ve spent a lot more time on what happens on the you know, where the school is and what’s going on during the school hours? There’s not typically a good evaluation of how students are using online resources or social media unless it’s has to do with assessments.
Now in our California Healthy Kids surveys, if there’s questions and results that bring up some red flags about social media abuse or cyberbullying or bullying then that’s obviously part of the self-study that the school does. And it’s also something then the WASC will talk about, but it’s not necessarily in their primary purview of check boxes to be able to see how students are doing things online.
Neil Fairbrother
Okay. Is there an obligation for schools to have a safeguarding policy?
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
There’s not necessarily an obligation. Again, I think it’s, it’s a matter of being practical. I don’t think any principal or any school site is naive enough to think that what happens online, doesn’t come back and somehow affect their school campus. And so some school sites I’m sure put into their safety plans some forms of discussion or education about social media presence. But again, I think a lot of it depends upon whether or not it’s proactive or reactive. And unfortunately, oftentimes something having to do with social media or cyberbullying probably is a lot more reactive than proactive because of the push for all of the academics and the data points that suggest the academic success versus again, the mental health or the social emotional supportive things.
Neil Fairbrother
Yes. Okay. Now, currently social media platforms have immunity from liability for what’s posted on their sites under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. And this is currently being challenged somewhat by the EARN IT act, which is currently working its way through the Senate. The COPPA Act, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act is currently being reviewed and possibly updated. And earlier this year, I think in January, the Californian Consumer Privacy Act the CCPA was introduced. Will all of this legislation, do you think, make a difference to the safety of online school life?
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
I know it’s a good attempt and that’s the intention, but as we all know from legislations, it’s one thing to put it on a piece of paper with a bunch of rules, another thing to be able to follow up with it. And so again, I think that’s the challenge is how do you make it, so that way students and families are using these things responsibly. They have you know, they have age restrictions on a lot of these social media platforms, but it’s not to the point that they truly authenticate that the individual using it has met the minimum age requirement or has the intellectual capacity to be able to be able to communicate wisely either direction. And as we’ve all seen, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s limited to kids. There’s some adults who can’t necessarily to be mature in their responses, or be polite in their responses.
So again, I think those are all behaviours that that hopefully we can teach a new generation of students and kids about how to treat each other with empathy and with humanity and to recognize that if you don’t have something nice to say, it’s not what we’re saying.
But like I said, a lot of people like to hide behind their screens, or their cell phones and type with without there being any filters and they might feel good for themselves, but they are not taking into any consideration of how hurtful they are to the person who posted something. So again, there’s a lot of different social ills that come with different things and it just exposes the tendencies of people’s true natures.
So again, I would assume that you’ve probably never said anything bad about somebody or to somebody on something, I’ve never done something like that. It doesn’t mean we haven’t thought it, but, you know, but to go to the point of typing it in and then pressing send that’s something that more people need to learn and recognizing that pressing send can be a dangerous thing sometimes.
Neil Fairbrother
What an age verification system of some sort of help do you think, is it practical?
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
I think an age verification thing helps a little bit. Again, just as a parent myself, I have a sophomore now in high school and an eighth grader in middle school. And you know, when they were coming up of age and their friends were getting cell phones and their friends were having different social media accounts and they were coming to us, you know, how come we don’t have a cell phone yet? Or how come we don’t have permission to use a social media account? You know, there’s a lot of parental peer to peer pressure to be able to provide for your children in the same way that their friends are being provided for. So again, there’s so many different ways to either help those families out that don’t want to necessarily follow the crowd. But again, this is in both of our countries, right? The opportunity to have some independent thought and independent choice. That’s that can be a good thing, too.
Neil Fairbrother
Indeed. Now, earlier you alluded to this, you said that you felt that the online learning aspect, the video conferencing aspect of teaching was going to be around for a while. And over here, we’re using a term called “blended learning”, which is where you have a mix of online educational materials and opportunities along with traditional place-based classroom methods. Do you think this is likely to become a permanent feature of education? And if so, what, what impact will this have on the skill sets needed to be a teacher?
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
The blended, as you describe it, as is definitely a possibility. Again, as we get into the possibility of more viruses more frequently and there being the need to have students stay away for extended period of times for illness it is important to be able to continue their education. So it’s going to be even more challenging for teachers to figure out how do they deliver it and assess instruction face-to-face where those who are in the rooms and also deliver instruction and assess for those students who are off campus and at home for different reasons.
How we’re going to somehow come out of COVID-19 is obviously still yet to be determined and what things are going to stick and what things are going to revert back to normal are still yet to be determined. I think I would hope that this opportunity has provided us all in a way to think on how can we provide an education to our school refuser students, the ones who have a hard time coming to campus for different reasons. Again, maybe they’ve been bullied before and now being around other people, you have some anxiety and to be able to still provide them an education is something that maybe we have more experience with now because of this.
For the students who are sick, because they have the common cold or the flu, and they’ve missed a few days of school, how do we continue to educate them and not make them feel like they’ve missed so much content because they were out for four days that they feel overwhelmed. You know, students who have to be hospitalized or dealing with cancers or other things, again, there’s different ways that hopefully we’re taking these experiences to learn about how can we do things remotely and to provide a school culture, how can we provide an academic culture that students can feel like that they can come and go in different ways. But it absolutely is going to be a greater demand on our teachers and our educators and in a way that it’s difficult to fathom right now.
I have said for years, for decades now, that teachers are essentially part time employees. If you imagine that they start in August and they end, typically in June. They take their paychecks and defer them over 12 months because technically we only get paid for 10 of those. If we made educators 12 month employees and we gave them time to really collaborate, to really work together to look at student success, to be able to analyse how their students performed in the previous year and to hand information off to the next teacher and say, here’s some of the areas of growth that these students need more focus on. If all of that became much more of a priority then we then will be in a place where we can even more be innovative with how we teach and how we assess learning.
But when we’re telling teachers that you’re coming back two or three days before the first day of school, and you better be ready, and then we make them do it at the same time they’re doing their own thing, that’s the greatest challenge.
Right now, what we’re seeing, even now with the distance learning and families, happier or upset that their students are not coming to school, our teachers are also the same ones who are raising their own families and their own children who are now staying at home because their schools are closed. And for my teachers who are juggling their seven and a half hour teaching job with their 24 hour parent job it’s an unfathomable thing.
And I just really appreciate those families who have been patient and who do empathize and recognize that this isn’t like some other professions where you have a committed dedicated time of start and end. When you’re a teacher, you’re a teacher all day long, all week long.
Neil Fairbrother
Greg, are we going to have to leave it there, I’m afraid we’re out of time. So thank you so much for your time. Absolutely fascinating insight into what’s going on State-side, and I wish you well, and I hope that you, your family, and of course your students stay COVID free and they have a healthy return back to school, possibly in the Fall.
Greg Louis Principal of Saratoga High School
Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to meet you.