From the city of Taguatinga-DF, Brazil.
Monday – October 12, 2020
According to the new normal established by COVID-19, as of March 12, I still don’t know for sure where all the students are. With the remote format, this is impossible. I have reports from students outside the Federal District. Many parents, for the most diverse reasons, left and/or sent their children to other states. Now to care, to accompany a relative, now to stay with the family, while the parents here face the financial crisis as best they can, because they have nowhere to leave their children, and they need to work.
Empty school, siren off, and some students whom I have no news and haven’t seen each other in a long time.
I note that the printed activities for “offline” students increased from the first to the second two-month period, motivated by the lack of data packages to attend classes through the Platform of the Bureau of Education of the Federal District. Students migrate to printed activities, which I regret because some contacts are established in an online format, we can know where they are, if they are relatively well, health concerns, especially mental, this information relieves or puts us on activating safety nets for children and teenagers.
Today I ask the school secretary to send a new spreadsheet to the teachers, to identify new accesses to the platform, the number of students to carry out new active searches (visits, phone calls, messages via WhatsApp or Instagram, calls on Facebook).
If our only contact with students who cannot participate in online classes is through printed activities, the best way is to bring them closer to an incredible printed material that brings them closer to the teaching offered on the digital platform, a bold and attractive notebook who can evaluate it.
As the pedagogical philosopher John Dewey said, “Education is not a preparation for life, education is life itself”. So, we cannot let projects die due to obstacles that appear along the way, or difficulties in possible resolutions.
The assistant principal thought of other support materials such as pencils, erasers, and pens, gifts for the students to accompany the activity notebook. Meanwhile, the coordinator brought the new format, eliminating loose leaves, all the subjects in a single notebook, with longer delivery, and research in his textbooks, with the aim of obtaining better results.
Our focus is on to eliminate the idea that the 2020 school year is lost, avoiding dropouts and/or school repetition. We don’t want to miss any. This is the challenge. Today, October 12 is Children’s Day in Brazil, and the best we could give them would be the dignity of quality public education, a duty of the State, and an obligation of all.
Tuesday – October 13, 2020.
Early in the morning, before I arrive at Education Center 17 in Taguatinga-DF, several professionals are already working or have already changed shifts. I realize that we are still in a lot of people at school, 8 cleanings, 1 of the two cooks because the other is from the risk group of the Covid-19, special schedule of work for the receptionists, the administrative staff, me, and the deputy director.
We need to work face to face and try to reduce the risk of contamination. However, a special schedule of work will not be possible for school management, many demands, and a huge group of students, teachers, advisers, parents, and employees to manage in this new reality.
Those left behind, the name given to the team that worked in person at the school, are sometimes become worried, silent, with a certain sadness. It takes youthful energy, the noise of the students on the court, walking the hallways, changing schedules from one class to another, the joy of rest. A school without our people is sad. Pause to talk about their lives and a few laughs to break up the atmosphere of introspection.
Today I will tell them the meaning of the nickname of the team that stayed at the school: “Left behind” refers to the film, of the same name/title in 2000, a Vic Sarin film with Kirk Cameron. After a world event, people mysteriously disappear. A pilot and a journalist seek answers to what happened. Whoops! They didn’t like the comparison. (LOL)
I worked so hard today that I didn’t see time going by. Now, I realize it is too late in the night, and still have to answer emails, access processes in the operating system of the Bureau of Education, prepare the collective coordination with the teachers that will happen tomorrow.
God! What a heavy agenda! Analysis of spreadsheets after the meet of the council of teachers, analysis of new tools like “Google Classroom”. Although it is Tuesday, the early “holiday” of Brazil’s Teachers Day, we are preparing meetings and posts on various digital platforms, with notices for students and their parents, and tutors.
The lesson of the day: the school lives of the collaborative action of all sectors. From the janitor to the classrooms, the same goal. This is how the school community is justified: parents, students, employees, and teachers, in favor of the academic success of the students. To paraphrase Brazilian writer Érico Veríssimo, life begins every day.
Wednesday – October 14, 2020.
Another day is about to begin and since March 12 the world has been waiting for a solution, a response to the lethal Covid-19, which in Brazil has killed more than 150,000 people on this date. It is another Wednesday and in the public education of the Federal District, today is the day of collective pedagogical coordination. Soon we will meet teachers, coordinators, secretaries, counselor advisers, and administrative staff, in a unified meeting platform.
Especially this week, we will have a unique agenda for both scholar periods. The worksheets created to accompany the students show us drop-in access to the digital teaching platform, numerous students migrating from online activities to printed activities. Disturbing!
Students and their families begin to have other difficulties in addition to the mechanism used to attend classes. Their cell phones and computers begin to need maintenance and technical assistance, they are stressed because they spend many hours in front of the machines, dealing alone with the responsibility of studying, often without the presence of their parents and the lack of interest caused by the many months without contact face to face with school and teachers.
Active searches reveal a significant number of students who have not yet been found either by phone or at their homes; reports from students that their families had to return to their places of origin in Brazil, many parents lost their jobs or had to help relatives in other states, many students and their siblings went to the care of relatives so that the parents could work.
In coordination, a teacher narrated how he came across some students who were still without access to the new teaching-learning mechanisms, and that it took three hours to convince some ninth-year students to return to online activities, avoiding another dropout, prevented the student from missing the last year of elementary school. Three hours after several searches on social networks to find it, to fight with his discouragement, the teacher told the student: – Do not leave school. The year is not lost! It takes hours of conversation, but a student was saved from failure. I’m excited. This attitude tells me that it is necessary to do a little more, not get tired.
Other strategies were launched for the last two months of the year of 2020, we added an activity notebook and a new evaluation block, we know the new project, an electronic magazine will serve students for a week with artists, entertainment, challenges, virtual meetings, interviews, lots of fun to break the routine, and all of this is to rescue a single student. No one left behind!
Effort, charisma, empathy, and faith.
Tomorrow the end of the series. Do not miss it!
