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Leading Virtual Learning Eric Fox, Associate Principal, Jenks High School
Do you remember your first year in school? I was in Mrs. Williams’ class at Fairview Elementary in the Moore School District. Her room was just down from the office and the cafeteria, and I sat near the back where I could see lots of books and her encouraging smile. My first year as a teacher, I was at Moore Highland East Junior High. I didn’t have a classroom to describe, but I pushed a cart through the hallway to use in other teachers’ rooms and I even made a trek out to the pre-fab building. My first week as an assistant principal at Jenks, I had a number of novel experiences including searches with the canine officer. Those experiences never showed up in grad school or the principal’s exam, yet I still was expected to navigate them with deftness. In the fall of 2020, I find myself a rookie again. Our students, staff, parents and colleagues are all “first years” at schooling during a pandemic. We had a brief taste in the spring, but now, the stakes are higher. We are implementing new procedures in areas ranging from sanitation and safety, emotional health, virtual meetings, event planning, curriculum re-mapping and fielding sales inquiries from tech vendors too numerous to count. Last spring “grace” and “flexibility” were words we used often, but now, expectations are elevated since we’ve had the summer for additional planning. I was comforted by going back to my textbook “School Leadership in the Age of a Pandemic” until I remembered it didn’t exist. So without a book or class, what have I learned about leading blended learning so far?
I’ve come to realize that my hearing has been sharpened. Listening intentionally has required a variety of mediums as informal as text checkins or phone calls or as formal as surveys and working groups, but gathering input has been critical for plan development. Those plans have not been chiseled in stone but revisited based on new information and input. This should include the anxieties and concerns of all our stakeholders as well as their hopes and aspirations. Dr. Nick Migliorino shared with me the most important task of a leader is to build and maintain relationships. While I had always valued building relationships, I had not thought about the need to intentionally maintain them. Building and maintaining relationships with students, their families, our staff and our community strengthens our ability to truly listen in challenging times. Students recently came to campus to pick up materials. Seeing students in the building made teachers’ faces glow even behind facemasks. Teachers receive energy from students whether through a face to face encounter or a virtual meeting, and they have been preparing for students throughout the spring and summer. They have invested in meeting social/emotional needs along with potential academic gaps. One of my teachers had a virtual scavenger hunt as a community builder on the first day, and students were asked to find something that started with the letter “w” or a favorite t-shirt or something that made them special. One student retrieved a lightsaber he and his father had built complete with lights and sounds.
