Bringing virtual education to life
Private schools have adapted to the pandemic through innovative programming and helping students find silver linings during a challenging time
The sound of a lone flute hovers in tandem with a dancing graphic of spilling ink, before drums and guitars, then horns and a piano give way to a remarkable performance of Peter Gabriel’s classic rock hit “Sledgehammer.”
Not only is the talent of the young orchestra on display worth noting, but also the circumstances in which they’re performing. At the virtual guidance of their dedicated music teacher, these 12 student musicians from St. Clement’s School — an independent girls’ school in Toronto — are playing their instruments in perfect harmony, each from the safety of their family homes.
“I give our teachers a lot of credit for taking risks and operating out of their comfort zones to make the best of this situation,” says Heather Henricks as she proudly shares the video recording.
The school’s vice-principal of learning, research and innovation explains that the musical performance was a rousing kickoff to the school’s latest virtual e-ssembly, one of many unique initiatives that she, and other schools like St. Clement’s, have set in motion since March of last year.
“We are constantly trying to evolve our programming based on the feedback of our students, families and staff,” she says, adding that in the realm of private and independent school education, these pivots and pursuits are normal.
They’re a way, she continues, of honouring a commitment that she and her fellow educators have made to delivering exceptional learning experiences to students no matter the circumstance.
“We’re small and we don’t have unlimited resources, but we’re fortunate in that if I make the case for something that will improve a particular learning experience or the well-being of our students, the board and the school will make it happen.”
Thinking back to the early days of the pandemic, Henricks remembers St. Clement’s staff working to help equip the school’s classrooms with new technological equipment that would allow for smooth transitions of in-person or virtual learning — depending on the latest restrictions.
In that same way, she adds, it was the school’s music teacher who went above and beyond to overlay the students’ separate parts of “Sledgehammer” into one combined piece, allowing them to rock out together seamlessly, but from a safe distance.
“By now we’re all well acquainted with technology,” she says. “And where it might have been seen as a hindrance to what we do, our educators are using it to really amplify the learning.”
Henricks shares that one recent online event saw St. Clement’s students meeting virtually with a Holocaust survivor, while another connected them with a panel of successful STEM professionals.
“There’s no doubt that our students have missed out on some of those impromptu conversations that they might have had in the halls and in the lunchroom,” says Henricks. “But they’re gaining this new broadening of perspective that has come with virtual technology. I see that as a win.”
The ability to find opportunity in challenge is an exercise that is equally familiar to the students and faculty of Holy Name of Mary College School, an independent Catholic school for girls in Grades 5 through 12.
Since the early days of the pandemic they have embraced a school-wide initiative called COVID Silver Linings, which sees the entire school community challenged to think of at least one recent and positive thing that has come of what has been a very difficult situation.
“We recognized that there was a lot of focus on what the girls haven’t been able to do since the pandemic began,” says HNMCS’s head of school Carrie Hughes-Grant. “We wanted to, as a school community, shift our mindsets and ask ourselves regularly, what have we done during this unique time that we would have never done otherwise?”
While the answers of the school population have varied, they may well have included such examples as enjoying a school-wide virtual campfire, participating in a global summit they would otherwise have not been able to attend or establishing deep connections with other students in virtual clubs who they might have never met on campus.
“Something I’m quite grateful for is that because we’re a Google school, our students were already familiar with the online world at the outset of the pandemic,” says Hughes-Grant.
“We’re a one-to-one school, so all our students and our teachers have a laptop,” she says. “We’ve always taught them that technology can be educational but also fun, so that preparedness allowed us to quickly pivot our delivery to virtual classes.”
Hughes-Grant emphasizes that this rapid adaptation did not mean she and the school’s administrators chose to sit back. Instead, they decided to focus on the well-being of the students, their families and on the faculty itself — ensuring that everyone was taken care of as their learnings carried forward.
“One thing we did right off the bat was change the students’ timetables to allow for more flexibility beyond their focused classroom time,” she says. “We were fortunate to have already completed 80 per cent of the curriculum at that time and we had the ability to slow things down.”
Since that time, a deep sense of community and care has prevailed, and even resulted in such student-led initiatives as a shared school hashtag that
“They’re gaining this new broadening of perspective that has come with virtual technology.”
HEATHER HENRICKS VICE-PRINCIPAL
ST. CLEMENT’S SCHOOL
reads #InThisTogether.
“The ‘what’ of what we’re aiming to provide here at Holy Name of Mary College School has never changed,” says Hughes-Grant. “We’ve just pivoted on the ‘how.’”
The ‘how’ has most certainly changed for the educators of The Mabin School, an independent elementary school that before the pandemic offered a specialized screen-free program for its kindergarten students.
Michelle Barchuk, the school’s director of communications and admissions, says having to innovate around tricky issues such as these have not been unwelcome. In fact, she explains, those types of experiences align quite readily with the school’s shared values and goals.
“Reflection is one of the main habits we strive to instill in our students. To be nimble and creative — we have always been a place for out-of-the-box thinking,” says Barchuk.
“As an organization we’re not just teaching children how to do those things, we’re actually doing them ourselves,” she adds. “So in many ways this was a huge opportunity to lead by example, and to show our students that there are windows of opportunity in every challenge.”
Barchuk says that in pivoting their learning experiences, The Mabin School “walked the walk” of their own learning platform by exercising openness, humility and the willingness to learn.
“It’s funny, we talk to our kindergarten students about how our brains grow when we make mistakes,” she laughs. “We have a running joke that at the beginning of the pandemic, our brains were huge.
“We had to learn as we went,” she says. “We didn’t have the perfect plan — and that’s OK. We continued to survey our students, parents and staff as we went along. There was no sitting back.”
Knowing that ample screen time would not be ideal for their young learners, yet still wanting to afford them the opportunity to interact with friends, The Mabin School partnered with parents to create specialized virtual programming per grade with an emphasis on smaller group size and limited onscreen activities.
Barchuk adds that in embracing these timely challenges, opportunities that weren’t yet being maximized were brought to the surface.
One such revelation was the ability to host interactive public events for the school community, such as a virtual Q&A with top doctors from SickKids, which was recently attended by 400 guests.
“That group would have not fit in our existing gymnasium,” she says. “So that’s opened a door to a larger community. And yet at the same time, these challenges have enabled and empowered us to … be even more focused on the individual learner, and to get to know our kids even more deeply than we might have in class.”
Barchuk adds that while this new world has presented many intriguing lessons for educators, she knows that ultimately, most staff, parents and students are looking forward to a day when the learning realm will be less bound by restriction.
Emily Shin, a Grade 11 student at St. Clement’s School, is amongst that majority. She says she misses the easy interactions with friends and lively buzz of a pre-COVID-19 classroom, but adds that she won’t forget the effort that was put forward by her school’s educators to adapt during a chaotic time.
“Speaking for my school and my community, it’s been inspiring to see how hard the teachers have been trying to keep our spirits up and keep us engaged since COVID started,” she says. “Even just this morning my teacher checked with each of us to see if we’d had any fresh air in the last day or so. They really pay attention and check up on us to make sure we’re all doing OK.
“Obviously this is not the easiest situation for them either and I definitely don’t take that for granted,” adds Shin. “It really is amazing to see how hard they’re working to make this work for us.”