It’s been a year since schools across the UAE closed down in response to the coronavirus pandemic, and while they quickly pivoted to remote education, there was a steep learning curve across the country before all education stakeholders were comfortable with the move.
In a wide reaching interview with Arabian Business, principal and CEO of GEMS Wellington International School Maryssa O’Connor takes us back to the early days of the pandemic, recalling how they adapted to digital learning.
O’Connor also talks about the lessons learned from this year and how coronavirus has altered education.
Take us back to the early days in March when you were first informed about the lockdown, what your thought process was at that time and how you reacted?
Initial reactions were about wellbeing and how it would feel for a student who’s used to being in school be learning from home.
We spent quite a lot of time in the early weeks making sure the younger students knew how things worked and not overwhelming both the students and the parents with too much information.
A lot of our parents with younger children were trying to work from home and support the learning so we really listened to our parents in that period and quickly adapted.
Maryssa O’Connor, principal and CEO of GEMS Wellington International School.
We came back with a much more balanced approach of letting the parents decide when they would do the activities with the children at home and feed that information back to the to the teachers, and just having some experience of streamed live learning with the teacher in school.
Parents aren’t normally in the classroom so what is very familiar to the children is not familiar to them and felt like they were suddenly the teachers and we wanted to reassure them that they weren’t. We needed their support, and we were grateful for the support, and it was amazing but they weren’t the teacher.
The more the more parents felt like that responsibility has been lifted, the better the communication between school and parents became.
We evolved, over the first four weeks, to a much better offer that suited everybody rather than one size fits all.
Our teachers were probably working 16 or 17 hour days and were constantly there for their students and parents responding to everything as quickly as they could because all we wanted to do was to reassure our parents and our students that we were still here for them even if the school is physically closed.
We worked very much on an individual basis with our teachers, making sure they knew exactly what they were doing, and had everything they needed. We also started a bit of a social calendar for our teachers because lots of them were locked down on their own and we wanted to be as empathetic as possible to their needs and help them through that process.
What would you have done differently?
We reached out to our parents really quickly but I think we maybe would have structured that more purposefully.
We’ve gotten really good at engaging parents virtually over time and if I could do something differently, I probably would have tried to bring our parents together online sooner.
We dealt with parents as individuals and responded to all their concerns. We worked with them as families and looking back, if we brought them together as groups of parents earlier that might have given them that sense of ease and understanding to help them transition to that remote learning period.
I think we’ve learned some really amazing skills that will support us in keeping that momentum and we’re not going to go backwards now. Whatever is thrown at us next, we will keep working collectively to achieve and I think we’re all a lot stronger for this.
What will remain with you after the pandemic?
From a learning point of view, one of the key things is the opportunity to give really focused feedback directly to the students. Our younger students now are much more familiar with using online platforms to share their work, and it has a more instant quality.
Tied into that is the opportunity to connect with parents more frequently. Although parents haven’t been able to be physically in school, we found more opportunities to make them a part of the educational process with more frequent online engagements which they can join from work whereas previously they would have had to leave their place of work.
It’s much more effective although I do miss seeing the parents in school and we might look for a blend going forward.
We’ve also had the opportunity to access global resources and connect with communities outside of the UAE which perhaps we wouldn’t have tried so hard to do if it wasn’t for this situation that we’re in. I think we’ve definitely learned how to think bigger and to look for opportunities.
What has it been like having the students back at school?
We are socially distancing and following all safety regulations but I think the very fact that children are back in school – to whatever degree each school has been able to manage that – has really changed the dynamics of learning again.
Part of being successful in a classroom is being able to take risks and feeling safe amongst your peers but when you’re in lockdown, and you’re at home on your own, you feel very exposed and you don’t feel that safety net of your friends around you. So this is why when we were back in school this year, we really heightened the awareness of how important friendship groups are.
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