COPING WITH COVID UNIQUE PERSPECTIVES

Initially our panic was on that Thursday the 12th, how much work could we get together to get home with the children for what we thought might be a couple of weeks before Easter. So there was a big panic in the school that day, not wanting the children to panic but wanting them to realise that they had some stuff to do at home. And so the following week, we realised fairly quickly that even though the notification wasn’t official, it wasn’t going to be a week or two. Chances were we weren’t going to be back until after Easter at that stage, we were still thinking after Easter.

A lot of our children would have underlying medical conditions. Some of our staff have underlying medical conditions and a lot of us have vulnerable people in our families. The first thing we did is we actually decided to revamp a totally new website. So we had stbrigidsschool. net which just showed the things we do normally, we wanted something that everyone could upload work to, practical work, but also work that would engage the children and not be as stressful for home.

Very quickly over a very short timeframe, we all had to learn a whole load of new technical skills. Ian, who helps us out with technical support, put the framework there and then we started to put stuff up and make loads of mistakes as we were doing it. Every teacher has control of their own class. They pop up work either Monday, Tuesday, or drip feed through the week dependent on what works best. The practical teachers put up work for a whole group. So the junior cycle would go up as a big activity, but broken up into small bits. So there were cookery exercises going up every day, and little baking challenges from Ann, Eamonn was putting up a challenge to make a cube out of your cereal box. Carmel was putting up options for how to plant your seeds, how to harvest your seeds from the food you have at home. So over a couple of weeks, it was exciting and nerve wracking because we were all panicking a little bit, it’s now public, it’s on the web.

I had put in a system where I phoned all the families the first week, I phoned all the families the third week and then we figured this takes a full week to do those phone calls, because you’re finding out how people are. And thankfully, we’ve only had news that one family had COVID-19 in the house, and luckily, it wasn’t a child in the school.

You’re also finding out how people are coping with having their children at home all the time. We decided the class teacher would ring their class group, and we would do that every week or every second week, depending on what families wanted. We didn’t want people to feel we were checking up on them, because that’s not what we were doing, but we did want them to feel first of all that we care, we’re still there to remind them that the work is there because in this lovely weather, kids want to play outside. Parents are very stressed because they’re at home anyway. So not to be an additional stress, but to know that a routine is good for everybody and that routine doesn’t have to be a nine to two because they’re not in school, they’re not here physically, but to break that day up and to know that in that day, there’s stuff on the links on the website for PE, also horticultural activities that you can do. We send sunflower seeds home for everyone to plant and then we posted some cards, the An Post cards. We sent those home as a literacy exercise. Here’s some cards you don’t have to pay postage, send them to whoever so we got them to do that.

Easter came, what will happen with the junior cert? What will happen with our junior cycle students? Concern for the teachers, concern for the students, they would normally be doing their home economics exam straight after Easter, would that happen? Would it not happen? And so then there was the idea that no teachers would be doing the assessment. Our teachers are already familiar with doing the assessment because we’re a junior cert schools programme. So they’re already doing that. So they weren’t anxious about it. They just wanted to know how it was to be presented. So we liaised with the special schools all over the country. And we looked at what models are other people using, and we came up with our model.

We use zoom for the staff meetings, almost everyone is able to access zoom, a couple of people have poor reception, so they can actually only text us in on the zoom screen. So we can’t hear them and we can’t see them, but we can see their messages. We know that that’s also some of the challenges for families. So families have or have not devices. Although as I pointed out to one family who were saying, Oh, no, they don’t have the computer, and I said, Yeah, but he’s using the Wee Live, you can access the school website on the Wee Live doesn’t have to download and print anything. But you can see what we want you to do. So again, it’s reminding parents that we’re not trying to stress them, but we’re trying to supplement what’s there for their families, and to know that on a very good sunny day, you mightn’t want them inside, but maybe tomorrow if it’s raining it might be an idea to have.

If you download resource, it’s really no use if you don’t print it out, because how are you going to write on it? A lot of the more attractive resources would require printing, but we couldn’t access the school. So what we did is we said right, when the first phase comes and we can access the school, we will send packs out, so parents, where they felt they weren’t able to access the device, or they weren’t able to get the child to engage with the on screen activity. And so when we came in last week, the secretary printed out the packs that the teachers had sent in, and we put those in the post. Some families are communicating via email, we set up a class email for every class, we’re utilising our Facebook, some families use Facebook, but don’t necessarily use their computer. They do a lot of things off their phone. We were aware that a lot of people were running into phone costs in that they were uploading or downloading data that they had never done before and they had gone over their data quota. Suddenly there was a bill that the teacher didn’t realise they were going to have or the student, or mammy and daddy didn’t realise they were going to have.

The strength of special education is that it’s all about the individual children. So the one size idea of you do everything via the website doesn’t really fit. So there’s a mixture of things going on. So some classes are using seesaw, which is wonderful because you can set individual activities, you don’t have to set your class group you set individual activities. And those activities can be put back off by the parent or child for feedback from the teacher. So that’s, that’s working. The website is working in other rooms the hardcopy as well, so it depends on the child and the teachers are being very versatile and creative in how they’re doing that. We’re trying always to link them back to those practical things that are on the site, the physical activity, the artistic endeavours that the art teacher and class teachers were putting up.

And we were involved in a Peace IV project with ST. Oliver’s in Carlingford and that was due to continue. So between ourselves and Carlingford, we put up a thank you to the frontline workers. So the children got a word that they had to portray in an artistic creative way. And the that was put together in a slideshow by one of the teacher Siobhan and that’s put up on the website. So it’s trying to link the children in and maintain the connection with school, because this is a long time not to be at school and there’s a lot of anxiety.

There’s a lot of expectations raised, even in relation to yesterday evening’s news, one of the TD’s mentioned, the July provision, and I found myself nearly screaming going, July provision, can’t run, the schools aren’t open. When you say it, people are stressed at home. Children with autism, who would always have come to St. Bridget’s in July, won’t be coming in July. Will they be coming in August? None of those questions or answers and I’m delighted actually heard on the news that the minister is going within two weeks going

to give guidelines about how we open up in September.

Young children don’t do social distancing, and the way special ed is, it’s not about standing at the top of the classroom and talking the lecture. It’s about the hands on, helping the child do that thing. How you do that, in this new way of being, it’s going to be quite difficult for us. So we’re wondering, and one of the other specialists school principals actually said at one stage, maybe we should all stop wondering because we’re all trying to plan for something or plan for something that we don’t know yet. So we can waste an awful lot of energy planning for that.

Our school leavers are due to leave at the end of June. They will do QQI certification, so we would do a batch of the modules in fifth year, and another batch and in the sixth year group. So we actually decided, the fifth year groups did have another year at school, it’s unlikely they’re going to be able to complete their modules in this space at home. So let’s just say we’re going to keep them working and we will do their authentication next year. We’ll focus on the school leavers and what needs to be done there. So we had a certain number of modules that were completed because they run over two years. So we put those forward for authentication. We’re continuing to work with the children online and via hardcopy on the modules that are not yet completed. We’ve made, with the board of management approval, a commitment to doing something that will be in the first couple of weeks in September to allow the children to tie up any pieces, even though they won’t be students at school. It’s not about extending the school year, but it’s about tying up what we know was already there, but we can’t put it together because we can’t bring them in to do it, and we can’t bring the staff in to work together to do it.

So last week, we timetabled staff, who felt they needed access to continue the remote learning or staff who needed printing, to be in over a two day period. So myself and the secretary were here for those two days and people who needed to get in and we’re trying to so that they would be safe and secure. Even though we did this deep clean of the whole school just after the closure. We also want people to feel safe? If you’re asking people to leave their own home, immediately there’s an anxiety because they’ve this message that you can’t go out and actually, I was listening to Tony Ashworth this morning, and he’s a specialist on autism. He was making the point, with all these very strong messages, and the change back to coming out of home, we’ve got the message home to everybody that you have to stay at home to be safe. Now there’s another message, you have to come out of your home. But the message that you gave me first was I wasn’t safe if I went out of my home. So that’s another change. So for the children with autism, but also for all the children with learning difficulties, it takes a long time to get a message over you have to reinforce that multiple times. The sort of media coverage has been wonderful about getting that message over. But you also now have to reverse that message and how you reverse it and how you reverse it in a safe way. So washing hands is hugely important. People are wearing masks, people are not wearing masks, and so that’s going to be a huge thing.

So the QQI was, was our next bit, as the discussion we had yesterday was our next piece, we would normally be heading towards our Debs night. We would have our school leavers mass, and we would have our Deb’s night and everyone have a wonderful time. Now we’re hoping come the autumn that we can have a socially safe Deb’s then. We know the young people are excited about that. We’ll do that surely and we will have the school mass then. But it would be terrible to leave the end of June and have nothing.

So the plan for June is we’re going to have a sort of a baking week, which is sort of a baking challenge, but like the Bake Off, we’re going to have a gardening week, we’re going to have a physical activity week, then we’d have our school leavers event, which unfortunately, the whole school won’t be asked, because the bigger that zoom group gets, the less contact there is for everybody.

So and then we’re looking at how do we come back safely? Hopefully these two weeks we’d have some sort of guidance, but the physical layout of a school we’re looking with a wide reception area. We have wide corridors because we only have a couple of corridors, but our classroom bases are quite small. One of my biggest concerns, as long before our children get to school, they’re on the school buses. They’re actually probably more proximate to each other on transport. I don’t know how Bus Eireann are going to manage that situation. Because you have the driver themselves, you had the boss escort and you have how many children could you safely put on a piece of transport? If the boss escort or the driver sneeze or have a cold, that bus presumably then becomes a quarantine group.

Our SNA’s, if they’re providing intimate care, there’s two required so if one person is crossing classes, if there’s a sneeze in this class mean two classes then have to be quarantined? So there’s a lot of lot of unknowns and those unknowns will be stressful for everybody, more stressful for our parents than anybody. Because we have a cohort of children with underlying conditions, parents are obviously anxious and want to be reassured. We want to be reassured, we want to feel that when we have the children here that they’re safe.

One of the things that I love about Brigid’s is the kids. On a bad day when there’s a load of stuff on in the office one of the things I try to make sure I do every day is that I get out to the class and visit all the classrooms. Will I be able to visit all the classrooms come September? Will I be the person who has to stand at the door? What I miss are the children. You come in you go it’s a building some St. Brigid’s is a lovely school but it’ sonly a lovely school because of the children and the staff.

And then what about the other things about COVID? I suppose I have to say, my concern about my family. I have a daughter who’s expecting I have a son in Dublin that I can’t see, other than virtually, I have uncles and aunts, and then I have my mum, who is in a nursing home and has had Covid and is recovering. But that was very stressful. Easter week was very different. She has underlying conditions and wouldn’t have expected to survive herself, but she hasn’t actually addressed that she ever had it to this week. So she’s all these weeks clear. We know that her testing is clear. But she is now coming to terms with, I had it and she said herself, how the hell did I survive that?

She has been cared for in an amazingly sensitive, kind way. When I thought I was going to lose her, going into her, the care that I got as well as the care that she got was amazing. But I learned how to put on PP safely.

The other issue that’s huge is that enrolment for St. Brigid’s would happen in this term. Parents who have children who are potentially moving to secondary school or thinking about going to a special ed, or at the beginning in early intervention and are hopefully heading towards a special school. They would normally be putting in all their paperwork through this stage coming up to see if this the school they want their child to be in, getting a chance to look around, having a chat about what we can do, what the numbers are like what the space is like. That’s not possible. So I’ve had parents who are trying to have that conversation on the phone. I’m telling them to look at the website to look at the sort of stuff that we do to see as much as they can. Early Intervention have done everything they could, they’ve nudged people who wanted to look in our direction, but things like assessments are not going to be done and not likely to be done.

The National Council for special ed, push a slightly different arrangement in. They’ve given a grace period, I suppose, is the way you describe it. If the parent and what paperwork is already present, looks as if the child would be appropriately enrolled, we can start the process, and then it will be reviewed September or October. They would normally allocate my teachers for next year, on the basis of my numbers. If I don’t have numbers, I won’t have teachers. So we’re looking okay, but that’s very difficult for parents.

It’s very hard to make a decision about a school when