3 More Ways to Deal with the Uncertainty of School Reopening

 1. Re frame Your Internal Dialogue

“The best approach to uncertainty about change and all of the uncomfortable feelings that come with it is to accept it. While it may feel like up until now, everything has been stable and predictable, life is constantly in flux. Change happens regardless of our thoughts and feelings about it.

Parents can practice acceptance through simple techniques. These include saying, to themselves or out loud, ‘I accept this change to school and my feelings of uncertainty. I can’t control it. I don’t have to like it, but I can accept that this year is different and that there will be change.’

Parents can also do this through mindfulness practices. These serve to give the brain a break and help us refocus. These practices can include setting aside one minute in the day to focus solely on breathing or focusing on the experience of drinking a cup of coffee. They can also work to identify any thoughts that may make uncertainty more stressful and work to gently reframe them.

Parents need to have compassion for themselves and others. We’ve never lived through a global pandemic before. We are uncertain. It’s OK. We’re all trying our best.” — Jessica Macdonald, clinical psychologist, North Carolina

2. Build a Strong Community of Support with Other Families

“Working with marriages and teens, I’ve seen the anxiety that comes with planning for a school year in which none of us know what to expect. The first thing parents need to do is to figure out the stance of the school district — to understand the district’s priorities in how they’ll provide school this year. If you have stayed connected with district board meetings or read the transcripts from these meetings, awesome!

The biggest factor in managing the uncertainty will be in having a strong support system outside of your family. You need a community of other people who are with you on this ride, whether it is choosing to homeschool or following the distance learning plans. These people will be able to connect with you in the suffering and uncertainty. But be careful not to choose people who just wallow in the suffering and play victim to their circumstances. That will not help. What you need are people who want support and to support others.” — Alisha Sweyd, marriage & family therapist, California

3. Acknowledge the Circumstances and Maintain a Schedule at Home

“The first thing to do, which is very important, is to acknowledge that it’s going to be an unusual year. Be honest. Help kids understand what they are walking into and reinforce that the new environment is intended to keep everyone safe and healthy. Explain that things may change — and that’s OK. Explain that everyone will need to be flexible and accepting.

Maintain a schedule at home. Children thrive on a routine: Make sure they are getting enough sleep, eating a healthy diet and getting physical activity every day. Recognize that both children and adults may feel worried and stressed, but model positivity and reassure yourself and children that it will be OK.” — Zubair Khan, child psychiatrist, Bronx, NY

2 Ways to Deal with the Uncertainty of School Reopening

My grandson in Australia has been out of school for a while as the lockdown in his State continues. My grandchildren in BC are going back to school when the numbers of COVID are increasing and anxiety is building in their parents and in us. How do we face and deal with the anxiety is a problem all parents have currently? Here is some advice that may help taken from the magazine “Fatherly”

Identify Your Feelings and Say Them Out Loud

“This ongoing uncertainty is unsettling, which leads to a lot of parental anxiety. The problem with unchecked parental anxiety is that our kids pick up on it and take it with them. Kids often don’t know how to maneuver their own abstract feelings of uncertainty and anxiety. They don’t have the words or concepts for how to figure out what and how they feel. So, they take it with them. This unchecked anxiety in kids often looks quite different compared to adults. It can show up as a ‘bad attitude,’ irritability, tantrums or meltdowns, withdrawal or isolation, or depression.

COVID adds a whole other level of uncertainty. It’s hard to make plans, to reassure ourselves and our kids, and to move forward because there seems to be no end in sight. The good news is that it will end. Things will get better eventually. We need to believe this, live it out, and model that for our children. They look to us for comfort and safety.

The best way to handle uncertainty in general is to identify the feelings and say them out loud. That initial awareness will go a long way. Once you identify how you feel, it’s important to show compassion for yourself and to be gentle with yourself and others. Have an ongoing conversation about their feelings. Connection helps with feelings of uncertainty and other uncomfortable emotions. Kids may act like they don’t need you, but they do.— Ann-Louise Lockhart, clinical psychologist and parenting coach, San Antonio

 2. Focus on What’s Within Your Control

 “Parenting is incredibly hard and emotional under normal circumstances, but we’re now asking parents to do impossible tasks, such as working full-time while homeschooling full-time or having to choose whether or not to send their kids to a school that cannot guarantee safety. These unprecedented challenges are consuming parents. We cannot minimize how difficult this situation is or how valid the anxiety is.

 Get support from those around you. Talk to other parents going through the same things. Being able to share and normalize a difficult experience with others provides comfort and peace and a safe space to externalize the anxiety and fear.

 And focus on what’s within your control. So much of life feels out of control at the moment. Think about even little things that you can control such as how much water you drink a day, eating regularly, getting enough sleep.” — Jessica Small, family therapist, Denver

 

Love

Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs

"Thinking is not enough. Nothing is. There is no final enough of wisdom, experience — any fucking thing. Only thing can resolve conflict is love, like I felt for Fletch and Ruski, Spooner, and Calico. Pure love.

Love? What is It?

Most natural painkiller what there is.   LOVE."

What does how they did at school mean?

The fight over the FSA tests continue and the arguments abound about the importance of the tests and the problems with the tests.  The University of BC's Human, Early Learning Partnership did a study that used the results of the FSA's to help them draw some conclusions.

I am sure the FSA test results helped the researchers come up with a narrowly defined set of parameters that allows them to measure one aspect of schooling. and then using those results they drew some bigger conclusions.

The question is, in my mind is  what should we, as a society,  be defining as doing well at school.  Now I have a biases, as I have taught in both the Practical and Fine arts and worked with many different types of students from Special Needs to gifted,  as well, I have worked in Inner city as well as high income schools over the last 37 years.

As a result of my experience,  I believe we need to take a broader view of what it means to do well at school that is broader then looking only at  FSA results. I believe that we should have benchmarks that measure how well students do at school, but these benchmarks should go beyond reading. writing and numeracy.  The benchmarks should also include the development of:

1.     Social skills

2.     Fine Art skills

3.     Athletic skills

4.     Self worth

5.     Career opportunities and

6.     Economics.

So I was interested that Paul Wilcox in his blog on January 25 titled

 FSA tests far too useful to boycott or kill  said some interesting things some of which I would like to comment on.

Paul said "The University of B.C.'s Human Early Learning Partnership, for example, used FSA data to look at the link between where children lived and how they did in school.

This makes sense, but what measurement did the researchers use to define the term "how they did in school"?  Paul implies that criteria is FSA results, which is fine if you want to look at a very narrow interpretation of what schools should be doing. FSA tests skills students learn over a number of years in reading, writing and numeracy but FSA results do not measure social skill, athletic skills or fine art skill development of students. All of the skill sets are important to student success in society.

Yesterday I published the grade 8 graduation test from 1895. The questions on that test cover many areas of the curriculum and define a well educated person. FSA testing does not in my mind define a well educated person. The tests do however; measure a very narrow scope of what we do in education.

The researchers followed 2,648 students from kindergarten to Grade 7. Partly, the findings were expected. Children from affluent neighbourhoods had better skills, unsurprising given advantages from preschool programs to better nutrition. But the study also found that even if students moved to more affluent neighbourhoods, their performance in basic skills lagged.

I am not sure what is suggested here but some questions arise for me. Since FSA results measure student’s progress over a number of years should this result be seen as a surprise. How did the researchers get individual student results as I was under the impression that school results were public not individual results. If the researchers are basing the lack of improvement on school results can they be sure that the same students wrote the tests in Grade 4 and Grade 7. It is not surprising that a student may take a few years for students to catch up to their peers but I wonder how many students moved to a more affluent neighbourhood? If the numbers were small can they be valid? Did the study also look at students who moved to a less affluent neighbourhood; if so what happened with these students did their results go up or down or remain the same?

That's important for anyone who cares about equal opportunity for children. The research shows the focus has to be on children's lives from birth to the time the start kindergarten.

So the question Paul is raising is about equal opportunity for children, which is an interesting idea, but one that is difficult to address. I would argue that BC has equal opportunity in our education system. I don't think it matters if a student enters school in an affluent or an inner city school, the quality of teachers and the quality of education given is very high for all.  Some would argue that we do not have equal opportunity in schools, but that argument in my mind is not valid. So where do we fall down as a society when we think abut equal opportunity for children, and I think the answer is about the number of children in poverty in this province. Parents in less affluent homes cannot provide the advantages such as pre-school or better nutrition that parents in more affluent homes can provide. I am not sure if  this study saying that the province should have more say in what/how parents raise or educate their child from birth to kindergarten or should the province spend more on pre-school education?

And according to the researchers, the study would have been impossible without the FSA test results."

I worked with many teacher researchers in my ten years as Curriculum Chair at the University of Phoenix (Vancouver Campus) and know that researchers can generate their own set of benchmarks to use if they want or need to have benchmarks. The FSA results provided the researchers with easy to access benchmarks to use, but to say the study would have been impossible without FSA test results is simply not true.  The research done certainly would have been harder to do, but it would have been done. The argument of impossibility is an exaggeration and in my mind takes away from the conclusions reached by the study.