Moving Into Lockdown

I wanted to write a post regarding my own experiences as an educator this week as we quickly moved from Level 3 to Level 4 in the fight against Covid-19.

In this unprecedented time, we have all seen changes that only a few months ago we couldn't have dreamed of happening. After seeing the heartbreaking news stories from countries like China, Italy and Iran and the insanely quick spread of the virus it still felt unreal until the borders closed. Then with the announcement on Monday of preparing to move into lockdown... we suddenly needed to move into top gear to prepare for schools to close and us all to go into isolation.

Monday: Sitting in our MIT PLG via hangouts at home, many of us trying out hangouts for the first time we were excited about the opportunities this tool could provide students and teachers. We were inspired by Matt's class site and shown how he would teach if (when) we went into lockdown. For me I was super excited.... how would hangouts look for a junior class where the little ones can't yet read and need that face to face contact, lots of modelling and oral instructions? I envisioned my phonics lessons being continued over hangouts and the connection students could still have with each other.

We left the hangout at 1pm to listen to the Priministers announcement that on Wednesday at 12pm we would be in lockdown and to prepare.

I think everyone processed that news in different ways. For me I felt emotional, my instant reaction was a concern for my little students who I love dearly.... my second response was to buy hair dye and my third response was that I needed to buy wood so I could work on my house while in isolation. It is funny the thoughts you have in times like this.

I also felt very far away from my school, working from home (I live 100kms away from my school and commute each day) and felt like I needed to be there.

Tuesday: Arriving at school it was suddenly all on.... how do we prepare our students for learning at home when they aren't with us to hear it. How can little ones access their learning without devices or wifi at home? What do we need to give them so they can continue to write and read and explore the world outside their four walls during this time?
For us junior teachers it looked different than the senior teachers. They could print out worksheets that they could read. Anything like that would need parent help with for our little ones and we can not rely on that happening for some of our children.
We put together packs with writing books, stationary books, ready to read books that we could attach the audio to our class site, plus these are free books provided by the ministry. We also included whiteboards and a ball, ballons and Engage activity cards for them to play at home.
Tensions were heightened as we were stepping into the unknown.

Wednesday: Getting ready for shut down day. Getting the go-ahead that we could deliver the school iPads to our families was a huge relief. This meant equity for some of our junior students. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough iPads for the whole of the Junior school so the decision was made that they would just be for Year 2 and Year 3. We also had out IT technician coming in at 3pm to try and connect them to the cluster wifi. What a crazy afternoon! I started delivering learning packs and iPads to whānau at 5:30pm and dropped off the last of them around 8pm. Whanau were so thankful. We still have 8 that need to be delivered by courier.....but this means our little ones have a way of connecting yippee!

Thursday: First day of lockdown. My Acting Principal who is leading us through this time has been amazing. He prioritised what we need to know and do during the next few weeks. Amongst all the admin involved with closing down a school, on the top of the list was ensuring support systems were set up for our vulnerable families, we also needed upskilling our staff so we can use hangouts via our class sites. I feel so lucky that we are already a digital school within the Manaiakalani cluster, therefore, we have been preparing for something like this for years without knowing. However, hangouts was a frontier that we had not needed to explore until now. How exciting that this tool is going to allow us to teach in new and exciting ways during this time.


Friday: the realities of the difficulties our families are going to face during his time became real as our first case that required agency support occurred. Having agencies working remotely is going to be difficult. As a whole staff, we connected over hangouts and I felt very proud of all my colleagues as they worked hard to quickly upskill and think outside of the box in terms of their new teaching practice.


My personal reflection as I took a walk around my 'block', which consists of a beautiful beach and bush track, was a vastly different reality of lockdown for many of my students and their families. My school is within a community that battles social, economic, housing and health issues. There are some things I can't impact however there are things I can... and that is what I'm going to do. Watch this space as I delve into the world of distance teaching.