This guest post is by Michael O’Hara, a principal at Edmonton Public Schools in Alberta, Canada Opportunity & dissent a pandemic worldThe COVID-19 pandemic is tragic but can be very instructive if we choose to accept what has changed. The pandemic has shown the fury and force of nature moving like a series of unstoppable hurricanes leaving devastation in its …
How to conduct teacher evaluations during online learning
As administrators prepare for the 2020-21 school year, many are concerned about how they will evaluate teachers who are teaching online. Obviously, the process will be somewhat different than the way evaluations are conducted in “normal” school settings. Over the past several years, both before and during the current Covid situation, I was engaged to evaluate the work of several …
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6 post COVID lessons for educational leaders
Most schools are now moving into the final stages of the craziest school year ever. With little notice, we were plunged into the existential storm of replacing physical schooling with Zoom or D2L or similar online schooling. There has been a very rapid learning-curve for everyone involved – school leaders, teachers, parents and students. Not surprisingly, there have been both …
A crisis not to be wasted
During this very difficult time where no individuals or institutions, certainly not schools, are unaffected by the implications of the Coronavirus, I have turned for inspiration to the speeches of great leaders – Churchill, Obama, Reagan – during the crises they had to manage. (YouTube, of course, is a wonderful resource, allowing us to actually see such leaders speak.) Winston …
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Heads: In crisis, position yourself for success
Two recent events in renowned, highly reputable institutions have reverberated through the independent school community. Both resulted in the Heads of their respective schools leaving their positions. The first was at the Bishop Strachan School in Toronto. Some members of the school community felt that students had not been properly prepared for a theatre performance based on Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. …