When COVID-19 hit in March 2020, pandemic emergency response plans embraced a singular education strategy – close all K–12 schools and default to hastily assembled, and largely untested, “home learning” programs. Nine months into the pandemic, public health authorities, ministries of education, and school superintendents are singing a different tune: keeping students in school is the first priority as we prepare to ride out the second wave of viral infections.
All of us are far more acutely aware of the accumulating academic, human, and social costs of shutting down schools, which fall unevenly upon children and teens in the most disadvantaged communities. Combating the relentless virus and keeping regional economies intact will not likely be greatly advanced through system-wide shutdowns.
With COVID-19 infection rates spiking again, school closures are becoming a distinct possibility, if only as a temporary respite for shaken-up students, fatigued teachers, and bewildered parents. Setting a relatively low infection positivity number, such as the three percent figure applied in closing New York City schools, is unwise because, by that standard, all schools will ultimately close at some point this school year.
What’s emerging is a “flexible response” doctrine that embraces a fuller arsenal of strategies and borrows the phrase popularized by former U.S. Secretary of State Robert McNamara in the early 1960s. Banishing the devastating pandemic requires a carefully considered set of options and a calibrated range of responses.
Let’s review some of the far more effective, targeted strategies:
A case-by-case isolation strategy in provinces and districts with lower transmission rates has proven reasonably effective, as long as the public health system can sustain contact tracing and isolate children and staff who have COVID-19 exposures. It was working, up until now, in most provinces covered by the Atlantic Bubble. Implementation challenges are compromising its effectiveness in Ontario, where the numbers of infections exceed the current capacity for contact tracing.
Extending school holidays is emerging as the most expedient way of applying an education “circuit breaker.” Starting the Christmas holidays early, as in Quebec and Alberta, and extending the break into January 2021, as in Manitoba, are the latest “quick fixes” gaining traction right across Canada. It’s much easier to extend school holiday time because that policy response resonates with teachers and education support workers, and is more minimally disruptive for working parents. Policymakers often opt for the path of least resistance.
Giving students and families the choice of completing courses in-person or online was implemented in Ontario and it caused an array of unanticipated, disruptive, and unpredictable consequences. Students and parents in more affluent school districts in the TDSB chose in-person schooling, while online enrolment was highest in the district’s poorest and most racialized communities. School schedules were constantly changing as students bailed out of in-person classes, generating unexpected demand for online courses. Hundreds of thousands of students in Toronto, Peel, and York Region have shifted online, rendering the two-track strategy essentially unsustainable over the longer term.
Moving to a hybrid blended learning model on a so-called “rotation system” is a response full of implementation bugs. Some Ontario school districts have resorted to dual track delivery models with classes combining in-person and video-streamed classes. That’s far from ideal because effective online teaching requires its own approach, not just televising in-class lessons. Since September 2020, New Brunswick has implemented a Hybrid Blended Learning Model with alternating days in all high schools, with decidedly mixed results. Curriculum coverage suffers, with losses estimated at up to 30 percent of learning outcomes, and student participation rates are reportedly low during the hybrid off days in the checkerboard high-school schedule.
Suspending in-person schooling and reverting to virtual or online home learning is an implementable option, only if it applies to all classes in Grades 7 to 12. Splitting larger classes in urban or suburban school zones is prohibitively expensive without significant hikes in provincial spending. That explains why so many school districts resort to shifting everyone to online classes. Younger children benefit more from teacher-guided instruction and do not spread the virus as readily, judging from K–6 in-person classes in Denmark and British Columbia.
Closing all schools should be the last resort this time around. That’s the consensus among leading British, Canadian, and American pediatricians and epidemiologists. Sending kids home should only be considered if positivity rates spike in schools. It’s an easy decision if and when transmission rates turn schools into vectors and staff infection rates make it impossible to provide a reasonable quality of education.
Resurgent rates of infection and community transmission in October and November have called into question some of the previous assumptions about the limited COVID-19 risks in schools. One recent research summary in Science Magazine painted “a more complex picture” of the very real risks and of the critical need to be flexible and responsive in the face of a rapidly changing, unpredictable public health crisis. There’s no perfect solution, but adopting a “flexible response” strategy, attuned to regional and local pandemic conditions, still makes the most sense.
Photo: Adobe Stock
The school shutdown triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020 required system and school leaders to reimagine schooling and articulate how the very nature of teaching and learning would be impacted.
At the time schools were shuttered, school leaders identified four immediate challenges necessitating reconsideration of their roles and responsibilities:
Given these emerging realities, we became curious about how equity was being experienced on a broader scale and were prompted to ask the question: What systemic interventions, structures, and processes were implemented to assure school leaders that that they would receive the support necessary to maintain effectiveness throughout this environment of uncertainty?
In 2017, we began a leadership development initiative in a southeastern Alberta school division with the goal of enhancing school leaders’ awareness of and capacity to engage in effective leadership. Over three years, we implemented a model of generative leadership (Adams et al., 2019) to support principals’ and vice-principals’ instructional leadership growth. Specifically, we were interested in the impact of four processes that informed leadership development:
Over months of collaboration, we observed system and school leaders develop understandings about their roles as leaders and grow in confidence to engage in and facilitate inquiry-based professional learning. Then schools closed.
Previous research has explored the ways in which change influences the professional identity of leaders and teachers and how they go about their work (see, as examples, Flores & Day, 2006; Helsing, 2007). As researchers, we recognized the potential for these dramatic circumstances to undermine the work of school leaders; however, we also recognized that times of turmoil might prompt new ways of thinking, being, and acting. With this in mind, we relied on the work of Marris (1975) and his understanding of the human need for “threads of continuity.”
Marris suggested that in response to experiences of change and uncertainty, individuals seek threads of continuity to sustain their perceptions of meaning, purpose, and identity. He explained that individuals assimilate new experiences by placing them in the context of a familiar, reliable construction of reality. His model provided a framework for our thinking as we sought to understand why and how leaders were able to negotiate the rapid and comprehensive changes that emerged in response to the pandemic.
To help understand the ways in which school leaders were accessing divisional supports provided by system leaders, we asked principals and vice-principals six open-ended questions through an online survey. The questions addressed:
Responses were received from two central office leaders, ten principals, and ten vice-principals, representing 48 percent of the participant pool.
One school leader highlighted the importance of continued monthly visits and monthly professional learning workshops:
“Previous routines and structures at our school greatly assisted us and prepared us for the pandemic. Our school continued to move forward, despite the challenges we faced. The collaborative, trusting relationships we have developed over the years helped move us in a positive manner.”
Specifically, school leaders identified their work with generative dialogue (Adams et al., 2019), the collaborative response model (Hewson et al., 2015), distributed leadership (Spillane, 2006), and their school division’s focus on student and staff well-being, as being helpful as they responded to the new demands of the pandemic.
The processes associated with generative dialogue provided leaders with tools for sustained and purposeful conversations with teachers about student learning. One leader noted, “[My] generative dialogue skills helped administrators in collecting feedback to inform planning.” By using collaborative processes such as analysis of student work exemplars, school leaders worked closely with staff to track students who were less engaged with learning in the home delivery model; supported grade-level teams to collaboratively plan for student learning and to share their individual expertise in areas such as technology, student engagement, and formative assessment; and provided professional learning opportunities for the transition to at-home inclusive education delivery.
Leaders identified the importance of their division’s established focus on distributed leadership. Key to the distribution of leadership was the work of classroom support teachers and family school liaison workers. These support personnel were important to meet the learning needs of children prior to the pandemic, but have been critical since its onset.
The existing three-year jurisdictional plan encouraged leaders to focus school goals on the well-being of both students and staff. During these early weeks, identifying and facilitating emotional supports was given a heightened priority. Often in school leader responses, the word “calm” was used. They recognized that their reaction to these circumstances could either exacerbate or de-escalate the anxiety associated with uncharted territory – so they took the calm approach.
New structures were also created and were described as “purposeful,” “thoughtful,” “robust,” and “powerful.” The structures were modelled first by central office leaders; school leaders acknowledged the critical role of central office leaders in ensuring that planning processes were in place to address the evolving needs that arose throughout the spring.
The notice of school closure was quickly followed by an emergency learning plan developed by the central office leadership team. The plan’s meaning and intent were further highlighted and reinforced through regular “Principal Huddles” involving central office and school-based leaders. Classroom support teachers worked closely with educational assistants (EAs) and classroom teachers to ensure that supports continued for children on Individual Student Learning Plans (ISPs). EAs (many of whom remained employed throughout the pandemic) played a more directive role in supporting children and often became the “go-to” person for the child.
Collaboration took on an expanded role. For many teachers, collaboration became a focal point of their learning. The structure for collaboration existed in the schools, but it now became essential to meeting the challenges imposed by home learning. Time, formerly in short supply for collaborative work, suddenly became available. Teachers were meeting virtually in grade groups, interest groups, learning groups, large groups, and thematic groups (e.g. literacy or numeracy focused) on a weekly and sometimes daily basis.
Professional learning focused on supporting the work of teachers in this new learning environment. Generative dialogue was used to support leader and teacher conversations “in emergent items like assessment and reporting and instruction in e-learning like never before.”
Divisional initiatives supported the purchase, dissemination, and use of technology. The first step was “the establishment of a universal level of tech ability (Google Classroom/Meet) and access to the technology by staff and families.” A division-wide purchase plan allowed individual staff members to access technology so they could work from home; families were provided Chromebooks/iPads for student use, and where necessary, Internet connection was also made available to families in need.
Led by central office leaders who were purposeful in their “common messaging,” communication between and among central office leaders, school-based leaders, teachers, staff, and families took on an amplified level of importance. Central office leaders ensured close and regular contact with their designated schools, and shared feedback from school leaders with the central office team. Communication was scheduled and focused on essential messages. The superintendent was in regular communication with all leaders and staff through video announcements and recorded messages, giving voice and personalization to the jurisdiction’s pandemic emergency plan and to the division’s commitment to student learning as the hallmark of success in the midst of uncertainty. Through his lead, school leaders also embraced a priority of more frequent communication with staff through a variety of modalities, both technological and personal.
We observed that school leaders relied on three threads of continuity to maintain their sense of meaning, purpose, and identity as they coped with these challenges:
These three threads of continuity were instrumental in ensuring that school leaders were supported in their learning and growing toward increased effectiveness in a global environment of uncertainty. As organizational strategies, they offer potential for system leaders to consider in times of rapid change.
Photo: Adobe Stock
Adams, P., Mombourquette, C., & Townsend, D. (2019). Leadership in education: The power of generative dialogue. Canadian Scholars’ Press.
Alberta Education (2018a). Leadership quality standard. Alberta Government. https://education.alberta.ca/media/3739621/standardsdoc-lqs-_fa-web-2018-01-17.pdf
Alberta Education (2018b). Superintendent leadership quality standard. Alberta Government. https://education.alberta.ca/media/3739619/standardsdoc-sqs-_fa-web-2018-02-02.pdf
Alberta Education (2018c). Teaching quality standard. Alberta Government. https://www.alberta.ca/assets/documents/ed-teaching-quality-standard-english.pdf
Flores, M., & Day, C. (2006). Contexts which shape and reshape teachers’ identities: A multi-perspective study. Teaching and Teacher Education, 22, 219–232. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2005.09.002
Helsing, D. (2007). Regarding uncertainty in teachers and teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23, 1317–1333. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2006.06.007
Hewson, K., Hewson, L., & Parsons, J. (2015). Envisioning a collaborative response model: Beliefs, structures, and processes to transform how we respond to the needs of students. Jigsaw Learning Inc.
Marris, P. (1975). Loss and change. Pantheon Books.
Spillane, J. (2006). Distributed leadership: The Jossey-Bass leadership library in education. Jossey-Bass.
When my family and I emigrated to Canada from England in 1987, we left behind a country with a deep-seated history of social class division and class-consciousness. Britain has long been obsessed with social class. My memoir, Moving (2020) – about growing up and being educated in a working-class community in Northern England – describes how social class differences affected every aspect of my own education.
My own struggles were with upward mobility – how to reconcile the culture of my selective grammar school with that of my working-class community. My two brothers had different struggles. At age 11, a standardized test marked them out for failure. I eventually made it to university on the other side of the country. They ended up in factories at the bottom of the hill. Social class mattered a lot in England then. It still does.
But in 1987, I was leaving all this behind. My Dean envied me. He had just returned from his first visit to Canada, the world’s first constitutionally bilingual, multicultural society. How lucky I was to be going there.
I arrived in a country that didn’t really talk much about social class at all. There were other serious sources of inequality to attend to instead. Race, immigration, language, poverty, and disability were foremost among these. Attention to inequalities in Indigenous and LGBTQ2+ communities would follow later. In our research, Dennis Shirley and I (2018) witnessed how assiduously Ontario educators addressed these issues from 2014–2018. But Canadians didn’t really seem to be concerned about social class at all. Working class inequality was a silent and invisible feature of the educational and social change agenda.
The coronavirus pandemic has suddenly brought the health and education of working-class people and their families to the forefront of our attention. They are the most likely to contract COVID-19, to have no one on hand to supervise them when they need to learn at home, and to live in overcrowded and unstable conditions unsuitable for learning or health.
What it means to be working class is a matter of debate, with some commentators defining it in terms of poor income or low level of education, for example. Traditionally, though, social class is about the kind of work people do and how that structures people’s opportunities and identities. In general, working class people do manual work (either skilled or unskilled), and/or have little control over their work conditions – think call-centre employees, people who have to work on contract in multiple care homes, or employees in the gig economy, for instance.
Social-class inequality is closely tied to student achievement and well-being, but compared to other causes of educational inequality, like race or poverty, it has received little attention. There are four explanations for this neglect and for why coronavirus is changing all that.
Why has Canada’s commitment to diversity not included social class? One reason is that acknowledging the struggles of the working class might be equated with acknowledging the white working class. That would risk associating whiteness with disadvantage instead of with its historic racial privilege.
The coronavirus crisis, though, has made clear that the working class is actually very diverse. Vulnerable, essential front-line workers include migrant farm labourers, immigrant care home workers, hospital cleaners, Uber drivers, and virtual shoppers. Whatever their race or ethnicity, they are all working class. They have the low pay, contractual insecurities, and vulnerability to COVID-19 to prove it.
In 1989, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality. Her study of battered women’s shelters (1991) showed that the experience of an abused white middle-class woman was different from that of a low-income immigrant woman speaking English as her second language. So, we had to examine the intersectionalities of oppressed women’s multiple identities. Working-class identity intersects with many other aspects of diversity. Social class needs to come back into our reckoning about inequality – and the coronavirus crisis is doing that with a bang.
Joan Williams (2017), author of White Working Class, says that the U.S. has become “clueless” about social class. Canada has its own (working class) cluelessness, expressed in the widespread belief that the vast majority of Canadians are middle class.
“Most Canadians think of themselves as middle class,” says Julie Cazzin in Maclean’s magazine (2017). Around 70 percent of Canadians self-identify as middle class, according to a poll conducted by the magazine. In another Maclean’s article, Shannon Proudfoot (2019) reflects on her own working-class background. She warns that “the way we elide, erase and ignore socio-economic class in Canada” makes it “like an invisible fact that shapes everything, but is acknowledged nowhere.”
Wolfgang Lehmann, Professor of sociology at Western University, has studied social class and education in Canada. The son of German immigrants, Lehmann grew up in a working-class family and, like me, still struggles with his identity as a middle-class academic. Lehmann’s research (2014) with 70 university students from working-class backgrounds shows how their experiences of educational success are corroded by “conflicting relationships with parents and former friends.” The upwardly mobile students’ new knowledge, experiences, and relationships set them apart from family members and friends in their former communities. They are also more likely to disengage or drop out from their studies. They feel caught between two cultures, belonging to neither one nor the other.
“Conflating class in Canada” and “making everybody middle class who isn’t rich” is “maybe dangerous,” says Lehmann. My own biography and 50 years of research support Lehmann’s findings that the particular culture of academic success is constantly tugging students away from their class identity. There has been a positive movement for schools to enable young people to retain pride in their race or gender identities, for example, as they strive to succeed. But working-class identity seems to be something that upwardly mobile students feel pressured to leave behind.
Our schools must accord as much dignity to the labour and values of working-class life as they do to other aspects of identity.
Coronavirus has witnessed displays of appreciation for front-line workers (many of whom are working class) on signs by the roadside and in pots being clattered on balconies. But we must do more. The hard work, labour, dedication, and sacrifice of these workers have kept the rest of us alive. Post-pandemic, we must no longer condemn workers in the gig economy to job insecurity and working multiple, contract-based jobs just to get by. Our schools must also accord as much dignity to the labour and values of working-class life as they do to other aspects of identity in a diverse and inclusive society.
Poverty continues to have massive consequences for student achievement and well-being. Several of the Ontario school districts that Dennis Shirley and I have studied instituted a wide array of anti-poverty strategies. But it is impossible to turn poverty on its head and celebrate it in the way we do with Black power, gay pride, and other kinds of diversity. And being working class is more than having a certain income level.
Until the 1970s, skilled manual labour had dignity and worth. Working-class labour and working-class communities were a source of collective pride. In Canada’s Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg, for example, alongside the harrowing depictions of genocide and the inspiring tributes to champions of human rights, is a compelling display on labour rights that includes the women and men who founded the Polish Solidarity Movement in the 1980s.
What should our schools be teaching about working-class identity? Where in our curriculum is the history of labour, labour rights, and trade unions, alongside business entrepreneurship and financial literacy? We should teach the concept of class through literature, history, and interdisciplinary projects, as robustly as we do race, gender, and gender identity. How can and should our schools engage with the class culture of our students, as well as other aspects of their culture? If equity is now about inclusion, it should be about social class inclusion and addressing socio-economic privilege too.
One consequence of the pandemic will be that some manufacturing will come back home from overseas. The availability of essential goods can no longer depend on vulnerable global supply chains. These new, working-class manufacturing jobs will be highly technical and involve sophisticated training.
In Germany, vocational education for skilled trades has very high status. In North America, though, it has become a second-class alternative for those who have failed to get into university. Commitment to vocational education, traditionally a politically conservative priority, must now become a priority of all Canadians. The labour, culture, skills, and pride of the working class and its educational preparation must be acknowledged, not ignored.
If we say we’re all middle class, this doesn’t just mean we ignore the working class. We ignore extreme wealth, too. We’re all becoming familiar with how the richest 1 percent of the world’s population owns more than half of the world’s wealth. The revenue of any of the Big 5 tech companies is greater than the GDP of many European nations. During the pandemic, the profits of the Big 5 have increased by about one-third. Meanwhile, for 40 years, the bottom half of society has barely advanced in real income terms at all – despite working longer hours and taking on more debt to make ends meet.
In Plutocrats: The rise of the new global super-rich and the fall of everyone else (2012), Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland, claims that more and more of the world is now a plutocracy of rule by the wealthy. Although many modern plutocrats worked their own way up from modest beginnings, they now protect these gains for themselves, their class, and their families. The meritocrats have turned into aristocrats, she says.
Along with a growing number of influential economists – most of them women – Freeland lists how the super-elite protect their wealth. They do this by tax avoidance, by lobbying parliament, by establishing not-for-profit foundations where they can shelter their wealth and champion their own causes, and by buying their children places in top global universities with sizeable “legacy” donations.
Plutocrats also hijack the global discourse of improvement and change by defining what is transformational and what is not. In Winners Take All: The elite charade of changing the world (2019), Anand Giridharadas interviews one of the key organizers for the vastly popular TED Talks. This organizer describes how TED Talks might address questions of how to reduce poverty. But one thing it absolutely won’t touch is economic inequality. Poverty and diversity get airtime. Wealth and inequality do not.
It’s time for this to change. Emboldened by the pandemic crisis, Freeland and other economists, like Joe Biden’s Economic Advisor, Heather Boushey (2019), propose a series of measures to combat the effect of extreme economic inequality on society. “Now is not the time for austerity,” said the Throne Speech on September 22. Instead there must be investment to support the vulnerable, restart public education, and create jobs that in turn will stimulate the consumer demand that will regenerate the economy. The new normal should be about prosperity, not austerity. The Latin origin prosperus means, simply, “doing well.” Prosperity is about reducing inequality and improving well-being and quality of life. In education, well-being should not be an afterthought or an add-on. It is integral to creating a prosperous society.
For too long, social class has been the masked face of inequity, disadvantage, and marginalization. We must no longer pretend we are all middle class. This ignores the privilege of extreme wealth and the profound struggles of the millions of front-line workers on whom all our lives depend. It also runs the risk of equating working-class identity with poverty and turning it into the only identity that has to be left behind in the struggle to improve. The role of front-line workers during the pandemic has taught us that working-class identity is part of diversity, not an exception to it.
To be fully equitable and inclusive, our schools must re-engage with working-class identity. They must teach working-class identity as a history and culture of pride involving the dignity of labour, solidarity with one’s fellows, the value of hard work, and the importance of self-improvement. They must resurrect and reinvent vocational education as a high-quality commitment. They must address socio-economic diversity as a fundamental aspect of inclusion, and must approach class inequality as something that entails the privileges of the extremely wealthy and not just the privations of the poor. They must teach students about wealth tax and tax avoidance as well as financial literacy and income tax management. They must, in other words, rethink everything they do on social class lines, as much as they have in relation to all other aspects of diversity.
Photo: Adobe Stock
First published in Education Canada, January 2021
Boushey, H. (2019). Unbound: How inequality constricts our economy and what we can do about it. Harvard University Press.
Cazzin, J. (2017, June 16). What’s middle class? It’s as much to do with values as with income. Maclean’s. www.macleans.ca/economy/why-everyone-feels-like-theyre-in-the-middle-class
Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), Article 8. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8
Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299. doi:10.2307/1229039
Freeland, C. (2012). Plutocrats: The rise of the new global super-rich and the fall of everyone else. Doubleday Canada.
Giridharadas, A. (2019). Winners take all: The elite charade of changing the world. Knopf.
Hargreaves, A., & Shirley, D. (2018). Well-being and success: Opposites that need to attract. Education Canada, 58(4), 40–43. www.edcan.ca/articles/well-being-and-success
Hargreaves, A. (2020). Moving: A memoir of social mobility. Solution Tree.
Lehmann, W. (2014). Habitus transformation and hidden injuries: Successful working-class university students. Sociology of Education, 87(1), 9. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038040713498777
Proudfoot, S. (2019, July 16). What does it mean to be working class in Canada? Maclean’s. www.macleans.ca/society/what-does-it-mean-to-be-working-class-in-canada
Williams, J. D. (2017). White working class: Overcoming class cluelessness in America. Harvard Business Review Press.
This webinar is primarily for governments, education professional organizations, school and school district leaders, teachers and education support workers, and anyone interested in understanding current issues for changes to K-12 schooling for the education sector across Canada in the COVID-19 era.
This webinar broadcasted on October 7th, 2020 explores what has been learned so far about leading schools through COVID-19 as we prepare to enter into our second month of school reopening across the country.
Topics explored include:
how our understandings of the work of school leaders is evolving;
the ways in which educators and their professional organizations are navigating ever-changing expectations of schooling during the present time; and
how schools can maintain a focus on the social justice and equity issues that have been laid bare as a result of COVID-19 and its impact on marginalized and racialized communities.
Note: EdCan is a neutral third-party intermediary organization. Live presentations do not constitute an endorsement by the EdCan Network/CEA of information or opinions expressed.
This webinar is primarily for governments, education professional organizations, school and school district leaders, teachers and education support workers, and anyone interested in understanding current issues for changes to K-12 schooling for the education sector across Canada in the COVID-19 era.
This webinar explores what has been learned so far about leading schools through COVID-19 as we prepare to enter into our second month of school reopening across the country.
Topics to be explored include:
how our understandings of the work of school leaders is evolving;
the ways in which educators and their professional organizations are navigating ever-changing expectations of schooling during the present time; and
how schools can maintain a focus on the social justice and equity issues that have been laid bare as a result of COVID-19 and its impact on marginalized and racialized communities.
Note: EdCan is a neutral third-party intermediary organization. Live presentations do not constitute an endorsement by the EdCan Network/CEA of information or opinions expressed.
“Teachers should not feel that it’s normal to feel unsafe at school.”
– Special education resource teacher
Violence in schools is usually framed in relation to student-on-student bullying, but schools are also workplaces for (predominantly women) teachers and educational assistants: workers who are entitled to – but do not always experience – a safe and violence-free workplace. Over the last decade, unions representing education workers have mobilized to shed light on the “dirty little secret” of educator-directed violence, and the issue has received a measure of media attention. Surprisingly, however, while there are numerous studies examining peer-on-peer violence among students, the harassment and violence experienced by educators has received limited scholarly attention. Indeed, while research on bullying, harassment, and violence against students number in the thousands, we were able to locate less than ten studies on educator-directed harassment and violence in Canada.
To start to address this gap in the scholarly literature, we surveyed 1,688 Ontario English public elementary school educators (contract and occasional teachers, PSP/ESPs, ECEs/DECEs, and other educational professionals) in December 2018 about their experiences of workplace harassment (e.g. slurs, insults, and put-downs) and violence (i.e. acts, attempts, and threats of physical aggression) in the 2017-2018 school year. The Harassment and Violence against Educators (Ontario) Survey endeavoured to assess the frequency, impact, and response to harassment and violence against educators as well as to determine how experiences of, and the response to, harassment and violence are impacted by intersecting factors such as gender, dis/ability, and racialization.
Our full report, Facing the Facts: The escalating crisis of violence against educators, can be downloaded at www.educatorviolence.net. Below, we have summarized select key findings.
The escalating crisis
“I love teaching… However, the emotional and mental abuse that I have been subjected to on a daily basis, and the physical toll it has been taking on my body is unbelievable… I took a medical leave from work due to the stress and abuse. I learned that [my health issues] are due to a prolonged exposure to these conditions.” – Grade 2 French Immersion teacher
The 2017-2018 Harassment and Violence against Educators (Ontario) Survey provides stark evidence that educator-directed harassment and violence is escalating and quickly becoming a crisis. Indeed, rates of harassment and violence are critically high. In a single year, as many as one in two educators will experience violence and as many as 70% will experience harassment, whether from a student, parent, colleague, or administrator. Moreover, harassment and violence are increasing dramatically. Rates of harassment have at least doubled, and rates of physical violence have increased seven- to ten-fold over the last two decades. At the same time, we see a disturbing normalization of violence against educators by administrators, educators, and students operating in tandem with the widespread minimization and/or denial of its multifaceted impacts by administrators, school boards, and politicians. In addition, findings from the Harassment and Violence against Educators (Ontario) Survey indicate that workplace violence is being underreported, and when reported, is all too often accompanied by blame and reprisal. This suggests that official rates underestimate the true prevalence and speaks to an organizational culture that is ill-equipped to address the issue. In real terms, while school boards have embraced the language of progressive discipline mandated under the provincial Education Act, educators told us that, in practice, there are few consequences for students’ harassing and violent behaviour. Finally, findings from the current study suggest that many educators feel neither adequately supported nor prepared and trained to deal with the student-initiated harassment and violence that they are experiencing.
Rates of harassment have at least doubled and rates of physical violence have increased seven- to ten-fold over the last two decades.
The escalating crisis of educator-directed harassment and violence speaks to the compounding impact of structural, fiscal, and social factors. The past 20 years have seen significant changes in society, including growing income disparity, social inequality, and economic stress, a rise in both moderate and severe mental health difficulties among children,3 and the ubiquity of electronic devices, all of which have increased the needs of students. At the same time, we have seen significant shifts in provincial education policies, including a commitment to mainstreaming (placing students with complex needs in regular classrooms with correspondingly decreased use of segregated classrooms) institutionally structured “corrective and supportive” progressive discipline policies,4 and ministry-mandated “Learning for all”5 approaches based on the recognition that “all students learn best when instruction, resources, and the learning environment are well suited to their particular strengths, interests, needs, and stage of readiness.”6 To be successful, these evidence-based practices require significant investment in infrastructure, materials, professional development, and human resources. Unfortunately, as needs and expectations increase, funding formulas have not been recalibrated. Indeed, in Ontario, the impact of deep funding cuts introduced under the Mike Harris government (1995 to 2002) continues to echo.7 In classrooms across Canada, educators are scrambling to meet ever-expanding expectations – from more Individual Education Plans to increased class size to standardized testing requirements – with decreasing levels of support and resources. The result is entirely predictable – frustrated, struggling children whose needs are not being met are “lashing out.”
Harassment and violence, coupled with inadequate (and potentially declining) resources to meet the needs of students, the normalization of harassment and violence against educators, a fear of reprisal for reporting, low levels of support, increasing levels of incivility, the uncertainty about how to effectively respond to harassment and violence, and an unwillingness on the part of administrators to consequence aggressive behaviour is having detrimental impacts on the classroom learning environment, students, and the health and well-being of educators. Indeed, in light of the high rates of harassment and violence experienced by educators in the performance of their duties, it is reasonable to expect that most educators will suffer a mental injury (e.g. PTSD, burnout) at some point in their careers. Accordingly, in addition to strategies to reduce harassment and violence in schools, it is essential that adequate resources (such as access to mental health professionals) are available to ensure that educators who experience harassment and violence have the opportunity to address any mental or physical injuries they sustain, as well as to learn the skills needed to cope with ongoing exposure to harassment and violence.
Action is needed
Addressing this significant problem will require a commitment to immediate action, including:
The workplace violence educators experience has significant and far-reaching costs. It impacts educators’ health, well-being, careers, ability to do their jobs, and relationships. In real terms, the violence reverberates through their personal and professional lives and in turn though the lives of their families, their colleagues, and the students they teach – creating ever more ripples that impact other families and indeed the broader community and society. The impacts also ripple over time – we can only imagine how the casual normalization of violence against (predominantly women) educators is shaping the perceptions and expectations of a generation of students.
Illustration: Diana Pham
First published in Education Canada, September 2020
1 David R. Lyon and Kevin S. Douglas, Violence Against B.C. Teachers: Report of the Simon Fraser University/British Columbia Teachers’ Federation violence against teachers survey (Burnaby, B.C.: SFU Mental Health, Law and Policy Institute, 1999).
2 The financial costs associated with days of work following an incident of harassment and violence were calculated in the following manner. Assuming a conservative rate of violence or harassment that would require time off work, of say just 10% (which is less than one fifth of the rate reported in this survey), then it can be expected that some 8,000 educators would have taken time off work at the time that the survey was conducted. If 25% of those 8,000 educators took the average number of 6.84 days off work, the average cost of replacing these educators in the classroom would be $1,652.31 each, amounting to over 3 million dollars annually. It is important to keep in mind that this estimates a very low rate of exposure to harassment and violence and estimates only the replacement costs associated with a single incident of harassment (and not violence) in any given year. It is important to keep in mind that educators in this survey reported multiple instances of violence and harassment in a single year.
3 A. Boak, H. A Hamilton, et al., The Mental Health and Well-being of Ontario Students, 1991-2017: Detailed findings from the Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey – CAMH Research Document Series No. 47 (Toronto, ON: Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 2018).
4 Ontario Ministry of Education, Supporting Bias-Free Progressive Discipline in Schools (2013). www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/policyfunding/SupportResGuide.pdf
5 Ontario Ministry of Education, Learning for All: A guide to effective assessment and instruction for all students, Kindergarten to Grade 12 (2013). www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/general/elemsec/speced/LearningforAll2013.pdf
6 Ontario Ministry of Education, Learning for All: 8.
7 H. Mackenzie, Course Correction: A blueprint to fix Ontario’s education funding formula (Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives, 2018). www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Ontario%20Office/2018/03/Course%20Correction.pdf
Few among us would disagree that well-being is an important priority in K-12 education. A growing body of research has demonstrated that focusing on well-being in K-12 education supports positive mental health, improves academic performance, and contributes to favourable health and quality of life outcomes for students and staff.1 Not only this, but investments in well-being have benefits for the educational system and broader society. These include reduced staff turnover and illness leave, reduced healthcare costs, increased educational attainment, and increased graduation and employment rates.2
Given the strong evidence, support for the role of well-being in K-12 education is growing. How to lead this work with sustained impact, however, is still an evolving conversation.
Extending our gaze “beyond the binder”
For decades, the most popular way to approach making an impact on K-12 students’ health and well-being has been via manualized programs, or what we’ve come to identify as “the binder” (e.g. checklist or activity-based programs with generic instructional content delivered over a specified time period). Likewise, many staff well-being initiatives have utilized this very same approach. Experienced educators have likely accumulated dozens of these over the years. Some continue to act as useful pedagogical and personal references, but many have since been relegated to gather dust in a storage closet.
Because of their step-by-step approach and specialized content, structured programs have filled an important need among educators and leaders looking to address and attend to well-being in the school setting. Faced with mounting needs and few resources, these programs offered valuable and easy-to-understand material to schools looking for expertise and capacity to address and improve well-being.
However, even if proven effective, such programs meet significant challenges in sustainability, and rarely scale beyond initial pilot sites. The sustained impact of “binder programs” is often challenged by factors such as the high cost of training and implementation, and their inability to adapt to diverse school cultures and contexts.3
Implementation science (the study of how to best implement things) has now demonstrated to us that if we want to have sustained impact, three conditions must all be in place:
While some binders cover #1, fewer cover #2, and #3 is a wholly different question that, we argue, is at the root of the problem. We must ask: If a school district was fully committed to becoming organizationally ready to advance student and staff well-being, would they know where to start? If we truly believe that advancing well-being is part of the role of schools, what are the changes we need to make to the structures, policies, culture, and resource flows in K-12 education to get there?
Increasingly, jurisdictions across Canada, are looking for insights on how to move beyond these binder approaches to more deeply embed a focus on well-being across their school communities. In short, they want to understand how to support school system leaders and educators to bring about lasting change with benefits for whole school communities, including leaders, teachers, staff, students and families. To do this, we need to provide solutions for the problems that leaders and educators are trying to solve, at all levels of the system: from classrooms to ministry board rooms.
Learning from leaders who are prioritizing wellness and shifting culture
As more school jurisdictions move their gaze beyond the binder toward system-level shifts in well-being, we are presented with an opportunity to learn. To understand how to effect change, we need to build upon the experience and expertise of school communities that have integrated well-being as a key priority. Recently, we invited six school authorities – three in Alberta, and three in British Columbia – to participate in case study research on well-being in K-12 education. The overall aim of these case studies was to understand promising practices in school well-being at the school jurisdiction level. We wanted to know how and why these school jurisdictions were able to prioritize well-being and shift school culture – what key factors helped to “move the needle.” By examining systems-level change through the lens of school community members, as well as through local documents and data, we are increasing our understanding of how to embed well-being in education.
While each journey has been unique, if we were to pick out one message we have heard clearly across cases, it is the importance of system leaders’ clear communication of well-being as a district priority, with action to meaningfully prioritize well-being through processes that create shared leadership for sustained impact. Examples include enacting district wellness committees with diverse representation, gathering local evidence to inform action, embedding wellness within district priorities and strategic plans, and supporting wellness-related professional development and learning for staff, students, and families. While individuals emphasized the need for champions across schools, they acknowledged the crucial role that system leaders played in overtly making well-being a priority in their jurisdictions and “setting the tone” for change. As one senior leader shared: “We have a superintendent who very much was compassionate and truly cared about kids and staff, so I think it ultimately does start from the top. That’s critical. If you don’t have that, then it just is a lot harder to pull off.”
When school system leaders communicated and modelled the importance of wellness in education, it provided tacit expectation and approval for staff to prioritize wellness in their work. “Our superintendent is very, very invested in student wellness and teacher wellness; and has really given us the permission to go forward in our district and spend a lot of time on wellness,” said one senior leader. This insight was also highlighted in prior research examining the role of school principals who were working to create healthy school cultures through a comprehensive school health approach.5
While leadership for wellness is critical, shifting whole systems requires coordination and effort among school authorities and their school communities. Our research is surfacing diverse stories of change – stories that are reinforcing the need for student and staff voice in well-being related planning, and the value of leveraging the existing strengths of school communities for sustained impact on well-being. The purpose of these case studies is to highlight key learnings about the prioritization of wellness across school communities, and also to share this knowledge with others striving toward this goal. We hope to share these unique stories and thus inspire other jurisdictions to move beyond the binder and accelerate well-being in K-12 education.
Photo: Courtesy SIRCLE
First published in Education Canada, September 2020
Download the Beyond the Binder report for recommendations and actions for system-level shifts in well-being:
Visit the SIRCLE Research Lab YouTube channel to hear directly from case jurisdictions about what is working for them:
Visit www.katestorey.com for more about this project and related research.
1 E. L. Faught, J. P. Ekwaru, et al., “The Combined Impact of Diet, Physical Activity, Sleep and Screen Time on Academic Achievement: A prospective study of elementary school students in Nova Scotia, Canada,” International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity 14, No. 1 (2017): 29; C. Fung, S. Kuhle, et al., “From ‘Best Practice’ to ‘Next Practice’: The effectiveness of school-based health promotion in improving healthy eating and physical activity and preventing childhood obesity,” International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition & Physical Activity 9, No. 1 (2012): 27-35; P. A. Jennings and M. T. Greenberg, “The Prosocial Classroom: Teacher social and emotional competence in relation to student and classroom outcomes,” Review of Educational Research 79, No. 1 (2009): 491-525.
2 The McConnell Foundation, Beyond the Binder: Toward more systemic and sustainable approaches to mental health and well-being in K-12 education (2020).
3 D. D. Embry and A. Biglan, “Evidence-Based Kernels: Fundamental units of behavioral influence,” Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review 11, No. 3 (2008): 75-113.
4 D. L. Fixsen, S. F. Naoom, et al., Implementation Research: A synthesis of the literature, FMHI Publication #231 (Tampa: University of South Florida, Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute, The National Implementation Research Network: 2005).
5 E. Roberts, N. McLeod, et al., “Implementing Comprehensive School Health in Alberta, Canada: The principal’s role,” Health Promotion International (2015).
COVID-19 is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. Researchers from the University of Winnipeg surveyed over 1,600 teachers across the country to explore which conditions, in terms of resources and job demands, allow teachers to remain resilient when teaching during times of disruption and change such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Note: These findings are part of a survey series on supporting teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Survey responses were first collected in April/May 2020, when teachers had just begun to teach remotely. The survey was administered a second time in mid-June 2020. It will be administered once more in September 2020, when students (in most provinces) are physically back in school practicing safety protocols related to COVID-19. Stay tuned for updates on this survey series.
Froese-Germain, B. (2014). Work-Life Balance and the Canadian Teaching Profession. Canadian Teachers’ Federation.
Santor, D. A., Bruckert, C. & McBride, K. (2019). Facing the Facts: the escalating crisis of violence against elementary school educators in Ontario. Ottawa ON: University of Ottawa.
Ontario Alliance of Black School Educators (2015). Voices of Ontario Black Educators: An Experiential Report.
Grace, A. P., & Wells, K. (2016). Sexual and gender minorities in Canadian education and society (1969-2013): A national handbook for K-12 educators. Ottawa, ON: Canadian Teachers’ Federation.
Ontario Principals’ Council. (2017). Ontario Principals’ Council International Symposium White Paper: Principal Work-life Balance and Well-being Matters. International School Leadership Symposium, Toronto, Canada.
Pollock, K. (with Wang, F. & Hauseman, D. C.). (2014). The changing nature of principals’ work: Final report.
Wang, F. & Pollock, K. (2020). School Principals’ Work and Well-Being in British Columbia: What They Say and Why It Matters.
Alphonso, C. (2020, January 16). Ontario’s teachers, education workers using more sick days now than almost a decade ago: Report. The Globe and Mail.
Naylor, C., & White, M. (2010). The Worklife of BC Teachers in 2009: A BCTF study of working and learning conditions [Research Report]. BC Teachers’ Federation. See also: Deloitte Development LLC. (2019). The ROI in workplace mental health programs: Good for people, good for business—A blueprint for workplace mental health programs (Deloitte Insights, p. 36) [Research and analysis]. Deloitte Development LLC.
Deloitte Development LLC. (2019). The ROI in workplace mental health programs: Good for people, good for business—A blueprint for workplace mental health programs (Deloitte Insights, p. 36) [Research and analysis]. Deloitte Development LLC.
Morrison, B. (2019, November 22). The Student Achievement Case For Workplace Being. The Case for Investing in K-12 Staff Well-being, Toronto, Canada.
Shain, M. (2019). Getting Ahead of the Perfect Legal Storm: Toward a basic legal standard of care for workers’ psychological safety (p. 27). Workplace Strategies for Mental Health.
Oberle, E., & Schonert-Reichl, K. A. (2016). Stress contagion in the classroom? The link between classroom teacher burnout and morning cortisol in elementary school students. Social Science & Medicine, 159, 30-37.
Núñez, J. L., Fernández, C., León, J., & Grijalvo, F. (2015). The relationship between teacher’s autonomy support and students’ autonomy and vitality. Teachers and Teaching, 21(2), 191-202. See also: Oberle, E., & Schonert-Reichl, K. A. (2016). Stress contagion in the classroom? The link between classroom teacher burnout and morning cortisol in elementary school students. Social Science & Medicine, 159, 30-37.
Jennings, P.A., Brown, J. L., Frank, J. L., Doyle, S., Oh, Y., Davis, R., DeMauro, A. A. & Greenberg, M. T. (2017). Impacts of the CARE for Teachers Program on Teachers’ Social and Emotional Competence and Classroom Interactions. American Psychological Association. See also: Quin, D. (2016). Longitudinal and Contextual Associations Between Teacher–Student Relationships and Student Engagement: A Systematic Review. Review of Educational Research. Vol 87. Issue 2.
Morrison, B. (2019, November 22). The Student Achievement Case For Workplace Being. The Case for Investing in K-12 Staff Well-being, Toronto, Canada.
Photos: Adobe Stock (Illustrator: iracosma)
Our free webinar series is available again to continue to provide Canadian K-12 staff with actionable strategies to improve workplace well-being during this unique back-to-school.
In Canada, K-12 education systems have a key role in developing strategies to support the mental health and wellbeing of students and staff. While stand alone programs have provided useful content for educators in addressing mental health and wellbeing, it is increasingly recognized that more systemic and sustainable solutions are required to address these issues over the long-term.
Grounded in discussions that took place at two National Roundtable events, this paper outlines why and how K-12 system leaders and their partners must move beyond one-off interventions, programs, and professional development towards an approach where mental health and wellbeing is integrated in the core mandate of public education.
In Canada, K-12 education systems have a key role in developing strategies to support the mental health and wellbeing of students and staff. While stand alone programs have provided useful content for educators in addressing mental health and wellbeing, it is increasingly recognized that more systemic and sustainable solutions are required to address these issues over the long-term.
Grounded in discussions that took place at two National Roundtable events, this paper outlines why and how K-12 system leaders and their partners must move beyond one-off interventions, programs, and professional development towards an approach where mental health and wellbeing is integrated in the core mandate of public education.
Well-being and Social Emotional Learning (SEL) have become increasingly top priorities in Canadian schools as concerns rise about the mental health and well-being of both staff and students. However, the vast majority of education leaders have not been trained to lead efforts that would integrate well-being and SEL across entire school districts through programs, policies, and practices that transform school cultures for the long term. This means that SEL initiatives are often one-off and unsustainable, and are restrained from becoming a reality across schools in every province and territory. On the flipside, emerging practice demonstrates that a Compassionate Systems Leadership approach – which combines mindfulness, compassion system-wide thinking and action – can strengthen the capacity of education leaders to effectively embed well-being at all levels of the education system.
Developing self-awareness, mindfulness, and compassion for self and others.
Building one’s awareness through intentional listening as well as clear and respectful communication, which can lead to more effective problem-solving among teams.
Understanding the underlying elements that shape a school’s organizational culture (i.e. its system of beliefs, values, behaviours, ways of communicating, etc.) as a way to determine levers for change.
The first step in building leadership capacity is to increase awareness of yourself – your own values and biases.
Everyone has the potential to create or support change regardless of their position within the school and district. More impact can be achieved when school leaders and staff learn and act together.
Developing skills and knowledge is an ongoing effort of practicing what you’ve learned, reflecting on what’s working and not working, and being open to adapting.
A Compassionate Systems Leadership approach guides education leaders in developing their own SEL skills as they grow in their ability to implement system-wide change in support of staff and student well-being. When education leaders cultivate compassion through SEL skills including empathy, sound decision-making, and self-regulation, they are better able to create educational cultures that emphasize well-being, understand barriers to change, and encourage other staff to contribute towards the change process.
Schroeder, J. & Rowcliffe, P. (2019). Growing Compassionate Systems Leadership: A toolkit. Retrieved from: http://earlylearning.ubc.ca/media/systems_toolkit_2019_final.pdf
Well-being and Social Emotional Learning (SEL) have become increasingly top priorities in Canadian schools as concerns rise about the mental health and well-being of both staff and students. However, the vast majority of education leaders have not been trained to lead efforts that would integrate well-being and SEL across entire school districts through programs, policies, and practices that transform school cultures for the long term. This means that SEL initiatives are often one-off and unsustainable, and are restrained from becoming a reality across schools in every province and territory. On the flipside, emerging practice demonstrates that a Compassionate Systems Leadership approach – which combines mindfulness, compassion system-wide thinking and action – can strengthen the capacity of education leaders to effectively embed well-being at all levels of the education system.
Developing self-awareness, mindfulness, and compassion for self and others.
Building one’s awareness through intentional listening as well as clear and respectful communication, which can lead to more effective problem-solving among teams.
Understanding the underlying elements that shape a school’s organizational culture (i.e. its system of beliefs, values, behaviours, ways of communicating, etc.) as a way to determine levers for change.
The first step in building leadership capacity is to increase awareness of yourself – your own values and biases.
Everyone has the potential to create or support change regardless of their position within the school and district. More impact can be achieved when school leaders and staff learn and act together.
Developing skills and knowledge is an ongoing effort of practicing what you’ve learned, reflecting on what’s working and not working, and being open to adapting.
A Compassionate Systems Leadership approach guides education leaders in developing their own SEL skills as they grow in their ability to implement system-wide change in support of staff and student well-being. When education leaders cultivate compassion through SEL skills including empathy, sound decision-making, and self-regulation, they are better able to create educational cultures that emphasize well-being, understand barriers to change, and encourage other staff to contribute towards the change process.
Schroeder, J. & Rowcliffe, P. (2019). Growing Compassionate Systems Leadership: A toolkit. Retrieved from: http://earlylearning.ubc.ca/media/systems_toolkit_2019_final.pdf
Playing and designing games have been of interest to K-12 educators as ways to support student learning. Parents are also increasingly accepting of video and board games as their choice of family activity, based on a 2018 survey by the Entertainment Software Association of Canada finding that 71% of Canadian parents play video games with their children. Game-Based Learning involves learning situations where children play or design games – whether digital, physical, or table-top games – in which they solve problems and gradually develop new knowledge and skills. Games have been found to improve students’ motivation and cognitive development, such as memory and reasoning.
Research demonstrates that Game-Based Learning enhances essential life skills that are foundational to a child’s development. In particular, Game-Based Learning provides students with an interactive learning experience where they have the opportunity to use and develop many different cognitive, social, and physical skills. Problem solving, critical thinking, strategy development, decision making, and teamwork are some of the many skills that games can provide.
Clark, D. B., Tanner-Smith, E. E., & Killingsworth, S. S. (2016). Digital games, design, and learning: A Systematic review and meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 86(1), 79–122. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654315582065
Entertainment Software Association of Canada. (2018). Essential facts about the Canadian video game industry 2018. http://theesa.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/ESAC18_BookletEN.pdf
Gee, J. P. (2008). Learning and Games. In K. Salen (Ed.), The ecology of games: Connecting youth, games, and learning(pp. 21–40). MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/ecology-games
Jaques, S., Kim, B., Shyleyko-Kostas, A., & Takeuchi, M. A. (2019). “I Just won against myself!”: Fostering early numeracy through board game play and redesign. Early Childhood Education, 26(1), 22–29. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/111252
Kim, B., & Bastani, R. (2017). Students as game designers: Transdisciplinary approach to STEAM Education. Special Issue of the Alberta Science Education Journal, 45(1), 45–52. https://sc.teachers.ab.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/ASEJVol45No1November2017.pdf
Kim, B. & Bastani, R. (2018). How Inversé merged with Go: (re)designing games as mathematical and cultural practices. In Proceedings of the 5thInternational STEM in Education Conference (pp.166-172). Brisbane, Australia: Queensland University of Technology. https://stem-in-ed2018.com.au/proceedings-2/
Koabel, G. (2017). Simulating the ages of man: Periodization in Civilization V and Europa Universalis IV. The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association, 10(17), 60-76. https://journals.sfu.ca/loading/index.php/loading/article/view/192
Sardone, N. B., & Devlin-Scherer, R. (2016). Let the (Board) Games Begin: Creative Ways to Enhance Teaching and Learning. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 89(6), 215–222. https://doi.org/10.1080/00098655.2016.1214473
Squire, K. (2006). From content to context: Videogames as designed experience. Educational Researcher, 35(8), 19–29. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X035008019
Qian, M., & Clark, K. R. (2016). Game-based learning and 21st century skills: A review of recent research. Computers in Human Behavior, 63, 50–58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.05.023
Zimmerman, E. (2009). Gaming literacy: Game design as a model for literacy in the twenty-first century. The video game theory reader, 2(23-32). http://www.neliufpe.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/08.pdf
This small-group online mindfulness workshop will take place via Zoom and is primarily for school-based K-12 educators and anyone interested in educator mental health and well-being. 20 participants maximum per session.
This small-group experiential workshop will provide a variety of mindfulness/attention practices that promote stress management. We will examine how understanding the physiology of stress, through the lens of mindfulness, can support educators and helping professionals in responding to situations with greater resilience.
Mindfulness promotes self-regulation, resilience, stress management, and improved relationships, thereby supporting positive mental health and well-being in students, staff and parents, leading to transformations in school culture.
The workshop will include one of the foundational mindfulness practices called the “body scan,” which is usually done lying down on a yoga mat or other comfortable surface. This practice can also be done seated in a chair. Please have ready a yoga mat, cushion and blanket for your own self care and comfort.
During these 90-minute INTERACTIVE presentations, participants are encouraged to have their camera and microphone turned on as the intention of the workshop is to build community and provide a space for educators to feel supported and learn some simple, yet effective mindfulness techniques that can be used daily to support their well-being.
About Mindfulness Everyday
At Mindfulness Everyday, we envision a society in which we relate to others, the environment, and ourselves with clarity and compassion. We promote mindfulness practices to enhance positive mental and physical health, compassionate action and resilience by providing stress reduction training and life skills for young people, educators, professional support staff and parents in the schools, and for organizations and members of the community.