Tag: Covid-19

A Cosmopolitan Classroom and Mixed-Race Identity: Challenges and Proposals for Change

On By paulmcguire2013In Academic Life, Poverty in Schools, school reformLeave a comment

It is a fallacy to believe that any school system is equitable and fair. As state institutions, schools reflect the society in which they exist. The picture Karis Campion and Remi Joseph-Salisbury paint in Bringing Black Mixed-Race Pupils into Focus in British Schooling (2022) shines a harsh light on the challenges mixed-race students face in British schools. While this is a rapidly growing population, there is yet to be an in-depth study of their lives and the effect of schools on those lives (Campion & Joseph-Salisbury, 2022). Their research sets out to chronicle the experiences of mixed-race students as recorded in three separate collections of qualitative interviews from 2013 – 2018 with 71 mixed-race people.

Campion and Joseph-Salisbury (2022) focus on mixed-race students. There is a limited amount of research in relation to this growing population of students across the British schooling systems. As classrooms become more diverse, they call for a more nuanced view of mixed-race students that focuses on their needs and experiences. Mixed-race students are often racialized as Black students. However, as Campion and Joseph-Salisbury stress, their experiences of racism and prejudice differ and remain underexamined.

Their findings are troubling. For them, the British system continues to put Black/White mixed-race and Black students at a considerable disadvantage. Especially by the time Black and mixed-race students reach the secondary school system, they face overt racism and prejudice from three sources – their peers, their teachers, and the curriculum (Campion & Joseph-Salisbury, 2022).

Mixed-race students face prejudice from all sides. In some cases, Black/White mixed-race students are wrongly associated with a wider racial population that includes Asians and Pakistanis. This leads to incidents of name-calling that wound and further alienate mixed-race students. In other instances, they are set apart from Black students who have difficulty understanding they have a White and a Black parent leading them to be labelled in derogatory terms like ‘zebra’ (Campion & Joseph-Salisbury, 2022, p. 75).

The prejudice these students face also comes from their teachers who have little or no training or understanding on how to work with mixed-race or Black students. Comments like “in this country, we dot our i’s” are a particularly hurtful example of the racism exhibited by teachers (Campion & Joseph-Salisbury, 2022, p. 79).

The prejudice of their peers and teachers is degrading and demoralizing for these students, and such racism also extends to the curriculum. For me, this seems the worst – here racism is embedded and sustained by the state through the curriculum that all students are subjected to. The curriculum continues to celebrate a White “British” mindset that has little to do with mixed-race and Black students.

Consequently, Black and mixed-race students are invisible in the curriculum. They are not included in what is called “fundamental British values” (Campion & Joseph-Salisbury, 2022, p. 80). In an earlier article, Joseph-Salisbury (2017) focuses on the unique impact of the history curriculum in Black Mixed-race Male Experiences of the UK Secondary School Curriculum. The teaching of the standardized history curriculum, for him, brushes out any mention of mixed-race or Black people apart from the abolishment of slavery in 19th century England.

The combined effect of systemic racism in the curriculum, teacher indifference and ignorance combined with peer antipathy results in lower grades and higher levels of suspension and expulsion for Black and mixed-race students (Campion & Joseph-Salisbury, 2022). Lower teacher expectations and overall dissatisfaction with the curriculum paints a very glum picture of school life for these students. 

This research introduces the problems faced by mixed-race students. Campion and Joseph-Salisbury (2022) outline that there are differences in the experiences of Black and mixed-race students and more research needs to be done to get a complete picture of their lived experiences. Mixed-race students face prejudice from both White and Black students. Students also talk about the inability of their peers to fathom interracial relationships (Campion & Joseph-Salisbury, 2022). This reminds us of the ongoing systemic barriers; there is little written here that suggests an overall solution. Consequently, more qualitative research is needed.

As mentioned earlier, Joseph-Salisbury writes about the impact of a Eurocentric history curriculum, especially on Black and mixed-race students. In the British curriculum – (there is no differentiation offered here; Scottish? Welsh? English?) these students simply do not exist. What does this do to the student whose story is not told? How can they possibly combat the sense of inferiority that comes from not being in the picture? 

Joseph-Salisbury offers some ideas on curriculum modification by featuring mixed-race role models like Malcolm X and Bob Marley. However, I am not convinced that these insertions go beyond token offerings in a curriculum that ultimately supports White hegemony.

Moving away from the study of mixed-race role models, Joseph-Salisbury proposes a different solution. He refers to Black Saturday Schools as a way to supplement what students are missing in the regular curriculum (Joseph-Salisbury, 2017). This is one solution to the White hegemonic curriculum that all his interview subjects agree does not serve Black and mixed-race students. Consider, Jake, one of his participants:

As long as Black schools would take into account the needs of mixed kids, then yeah, I think that’s the future for us. Mainstream isn’t working. While responses and proposed interventions were varied among participants, the underlying dissatisfaction with the current curriculum was unanimous. (Joseph-Salisbury, 2017 p. 458)

Black Saturday Schools are part of the 50-year-old Black Supplementary School Movement in Great Britain.  This is one response to the racist nature of the regular British school system. In some ways, these schools sound similar to the language schools run by both English public-school boards here in Ottawa. Language schools in areas like Somerset West cater to Chinese and Vietnamese students offering instruction unavailable in local community schools. While the British schools have less support than their Canadian counterparts, there is real interest in studying this movement to better understand how these schools could be a solution to a problem that is plaguing British schools (Andrews, 2016). Black Supplementary Schools do offer the possibility of building resilience in Black and mixed-race youth. This additional training can support students in their efforts to succeed in a public schooling system that was and is designed for White communities only (2017).  Joseph-Salisbury & Andrews continue that Black Supplementary Schools must find ways to recognize Black mixed-race students within the curriculum.

When Black British children faced endemic racism, Saturday school was a necessity.

While the Black Saturday Schools offer an avenue for reform in Great Britain, Dunn, Spaulding, & Love, (2021) suggest that in the United States the time for reform is over, that the White, Eurocentric school system must be destroyed and worked over to better reflect the lives of Black Students. For example, they state:

Educational reform has never been enough; thus, now is the time for abolition. It’s imperative that we tear down the corrosive, racist and inhumane practices and policies to rebuild our educational system to value the multiplicity of our students and diverse communities. (p. 215)

Bettina Love, the founder of the Abolitionist Teaching Network in the United States, has written extensively on the need for a new type of teaching for Black, Brown, and Indigenous students. She advocates for a new pedagogy that teaches these students to thrive, not just survive (Wall, 2021).  Love and others are using the disruptions caused by Covid to propose a new system of education for racialized students. First, a critical consciousness needs to be developed so that students can recognize the racist nature of the current school system. Second, schools need to move away from indoctrination towards a system of critical analysis that empowers students. Finally, racist policies, practices and educators need to be called out and sidelined (Love et al, 2021). While this might seem much more radical than the Supplementary School Movement, the goals are similar. In both cases, there is a call for new institutions and new spaces that supplant White supremacist institutions that are incapable of providing an equitable education to racialized students.  Both decry the inability of their school systems to develop an inclusive, non-racist curriculum.

An excellent panel discussion on Abolitionist Teaching including Bettina Love

Kendi (2019) supports this desire for something different and more equitable in his research about Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the United States. For Kendi (2019) HBCUs reflect the reality in America where Black Americans “live in majority-Black neighborhoods, work in majority-Black sites of employment, organize in majority-Black associations” (p. 171). The establishment of new systems that empower racialized students recognizes that there is no real mainstream world or school system. There are instead multiple real worlds and perspectives that need to be respected.

Campion and Joseph-Salisbury have revealed a world that is unjust and inequitable. They offer important research into the lives of mixed-race students and how they sometimes intersect with the world of Black children. The story is nuanced and complex. While this book chapter presents a problem with vague solutions, it builds on research that calls out the negative impact of curriculum that marginalizes these students.


While Joseph-Salisbury and others propose the Supplementary Schools to enhance White schools that are resistant to change, others like Love and Kendi advocate instead for spaces apart from the White Eurocentric school culture. It is a powerful argument and a logical extension to Joseph-Salisbury and Campion’s reform-minded proposals. The world of the mixed-race student differs in important ways from that of Black students; the nature of racism and prejudice is unique and no study of the multiracial cosmopolitan classroom is complete without careful study of the challenges that make up the daily lives of this rapidly growing ethnic group.

A final word from Remi Joseph-Salisbury speaking about racial microaggressions in higher education

References

Andrews. (2016). The problem of political blackness: lessons from the Black Supplementary School Movement. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39(11), 2060–2078. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2015.1131314

Campion, K. and Joseph-Salisbury, R. (2021). Bringing Black Mixed-Race Pupils into Focus in British Schooling In Schecter, S. & James, C. (Eds.),

Critical Approaches Toward a Cosmopolitan Education (p. 69-85). Routledge.

Dunn, Chisholm, A., Spaulding, E., & Love, B. L. (2021). A Radical Doctrine: Abolitionist Education in Hard Times. Educational Studies (Ames), 57(3), 211–223. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2021.1892684

Joseph-Salisbury, R. (2017). Black Mixed-race Male Experiences of the UK Secondary School Curriculum. The Journal of Negro Education, 86(4), 449–462. https://doi.org/10.7709/jnegroeducation.86.4.0449

Joseph-Salisbury, & Andrews, K. (2017). Locating black mixed-raced males in the black supplementary school movement. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 20(6), 752–765. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2016.1248838

Kendi. (2019). How to be an Antiracist (First edition.). One World.

Love, & Muhammad, G. E. (2020). What do we have to lose: toward disruption, agitation, and abolition in Black education. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 33(7), 695–697. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2020.1753257

Wall. (2021). Review of Love’s We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom. The Professional Educator, 45(1), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.47038/tpe.45.01.02

 

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What does your Covid balance sheet look like? The Good, The Bad, The Ugly.

On By paulmcguire2013In Leaning in, Life in the Times of COVID - 19Leave a comment

I am starting with a question for you all. What does your life balance sheet look like after 14 months in a global pandemic?

This is a unique time in all of our lives. No story has dominated the news cycle anything like Covid – not in our lifetime. If you wanted to look for comparisons, you would have to go back to the Second World War. Absolutely nothing has dominated our lives like the pandemic.

So, how is your life going? I get asked this a lot mainly because I am in my fifth month on Noom and they tend to ask you lots of questions that call for a certain amount of personal reflection. I think it’s worth the trouble. Since the beginning of January I have been able to shed almost 20 pounds of excess baggage and I am looking to lose 10 more – Nomm likes it when you make public declarations!

How do you figure out your balance sheet in the biggest global crisis you are likely to see?

For me, it has to be a balance – Good, Bad and yes, Ugly. There is some of all of this for me and I would say probably for you too.

The Good is important, it is what we value the most and it is what paints the brightest self portrait. There are good things going on because of Covid. I have signed up for a Ph.D. which I will start this fall. I have had enough time to reflect that this is a good life challenge for me and many of you in the Twitterverse actually supported my decision to take this on – thanks for this.

I mentioned Noom, that is something I am doing with my partner, Heather and along with this we are new converts to the Peloton which is helping up get our hearts and I would say our heads back into good shape. Both of these healthy projects took flight nearly 10 months into the pandemic. Think of that; we have done our fair share of languishing, but we decided to take something back, get some greater control in a world where so much is beyond us.

One big positive thing in all of this has been the noticing. Early on in the pandemic I started walking our dog Dory all the time. This was Dory’s version of the Peloton, and she is still looking pretty sleek! The walks allowed me to see all around our neighbourhood and some of the walks eventually took Heather and I as far as the Ottawa River – these walks unfortunately were beyond what Dory could manage.

A recent Covid Walk shot – the photos had to be in our neighbourhood and no people could be in the shots. At any one time, only four pictures could be displayed.

The walks and the photos are a long-standing Good that has come out the pandemic. Once you really start noticing the world around you things begin to open up.

The Bad is not somewhere I want to dwell. We all hear this all the time, every day. It is almost comical how many bad news stories our local CBC Ottawa radio station is able to conjure up. They seem to take a certain glee in featuring yet another colourful local story about how our lives have been strained and drained over the past 14 months.

My Bad is the same as everyone’s. The places we can’t go – Kilimanjaro – Cuba – Montreal – the Maritimes – you get the picture. The people we can’t be with – for me this is mainly family. Our meetings with family are challenging and sometimes downright silly like when we all hid under a canopy on Christmas Eve in the middle of a torrential rainfall.

So, let’s not linger, the Bad is part of our shared experience, it varies depending on people’s circumstances, but we all share the Bad.

What about the Ugly? What does that look like for you? How have things become ugly for you and for your world? The Ugly could be your social media. Here we have a neighbourhood Facebook Page where post after post decries the habits of some of the homeless people in our area. That is nothing but Ugly.

For me too social media has played a part. When you can’t see people except for their screen, sometimes things can go terribly wrong. Just a few days ago I totally lost it when something I had spend hours on got a bit messed due to a technical glitch. Really, no one’s fault, but I totally lost it.

Why does this happen? How is it that it seems easier now than ever to become totally unhinged?

Is Covid unhinging us?

I later apologized for my bizarre behaviour, but I am perplexed by the Ugly. Can we understand this? Can you talk about your ugly side?

While I love the Good and accept the Bad, the Ugly has me wondering. What is going on? In other cases, long-time friendships are at risk because of some of the strains brought on by the pandemic.

I do not have any answers to finish off this post. The Ugly is what it is and I do hope the damage is not permanent. For me in times like this, I like to go back to Pema Chödrön and all of her wisdom. She is truly a voice for our time. She talks about treating ourselves, even with the ugly with loving kindness:

But lovingkindness—maitri (Pali, metta)—toward ourselves doesn’t mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy, we can still be angry. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That’s what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.

Pema Chödrön meditation

This is my answer to the Ugly. We are challenged to treat ourselves as fallible humans capable of great things and sometimes of true ugliness. We don’t dwell in the Ugly instead we lean in to learn.

We lean towards the Good, we acknowledge the Bad and we learn from the Ugly.

Covid Journal # 7 – Returning to school is risky

On By paulmcguire2013In Innovation, Life in the Times of COVID - 19, school reform1 Comment

These graphs put out by science teacher and biostatistician, Ryan Imgrund are something I am going to watch closely over the next month.

‘On August 2, in Ottawa there is a 4.8% chance you’ll encounter an individual who can transmit COVID-19 in a group of 27.’

This is actually a statement put out on Ryan Imgrund’s Twitter feed. You can fill in the blanks for your region if you would like. How’s it going for you?

What this means should startle everyone. There is a significant risk of COVID-19 spreading in classrooms this fall. There is no hard cap for kindergarten classes or grades 4-8. Kindergarten classes can still be as high as 29 students, classes in grades 1-3 are capped at 23 (90% of classes must have 20 or fewer students).

From Ontario Families for Public Education

The only meaningful caps that exist right now are in grades 9 – 12 where students will attend in groups of 15.

Not to sound overly critical, but I am not sure how this is going to work.

Today, Sunday, August 2 – Australia declares a state of disaster in Victoria and imposes curfew in Melbourne  

Great Britain and Spain are beginning lockdowns again in various regions.

In the New York Times – After a brief reprieve, coronavirus charges back in US

Again the New York Times – A school reopened. It had to quarantine students within hours.

I am going to stop at four, but I could add many more stories. My point here is to state the obvious, this virus is not under control. Reopening is fraught with danger and in many cases leads to more outbreaks.

The great thing about daily statistics is that we can track the daily spread of the virus against significant changes in behaviour.

While we all should be concerned as Minister Lecce is for the emotional well-being of students, is sending them back into a very risky environment the best way to do this?

Should we not be trying to reimagine what school could look like if we were not so tied to an industrial era school model? We could be asking – what was so good about how we did things in the past? What could we do better? Why are we so tied to tradition at the risk of our student’s and teacher’s health?

Schools support the economy, there is no question about that. When kids are in school people can go back to work. If we truly were concerned about the well-being of staff and students we would be looking closely at the statistics and we would be using this time to reimagine school.

Are the people in charge of our school systems motivated to do this? People in senior positions traditionally want to protect the status quo. It is in their self-interest to do this. There is nothing amazing in this – all large corporations act in the same manner.

But what should we be doing?

  • Should any grouping of students be above 15?

  • Could we be using facilities like community and health centers to spread out our teachers and students?

  • Could we develop more robust video conferencing tools to make the online experience more meaningful (is there life after Zoom??)

  • Is five days a week, 6 hours a day really meaningful? Can we develop a community-based model for education that makes parents active partners?

 

We do ask these questions in countless blog posts and podcasts, but are these questions ever taken seriously? If not now, when? How tied are we really to an old model that really doesn’t work well for many kids?

I really want to see what happens in the next 30 days. Will there be meaningful debate about what education in Ontario will look like this year? Do we realize that we are in this for the long haul? There is no returning to school until there is a vaccine.

I will be working with teacher candidates in first and second year so I will certainly have lots of opportunities to see how we protect our students and staff. I will continue to look at the stats – we are very fortunate to have this daily reminder about what we are heading into.

Will we invest in real change or will we just hope for the best?

Covid Journal # 6 We all live each other’s backyard now

On By paulmcguire2013In Life in the Times of COVID - 19Leave a comment

I woke up this morning to a startling note. I was being chastised and I guess I deserved it. I had made a snarky comment on a public Facebook post that celebrated someone’s generous idea of social distancing.

I have seen other posts like this. From this person and others. Here I just let things slip. I really should have kept my mouth closed, even though the behaviours of others has an impact on all of us.

The Ottawa Citizen came out with a great article today. The article makes it really plain how the virus is being spread: ‘It’s not just people in their 20s’: Multi-age gatherings driving spike in Ottawa COVID-19 cases.

So people are interpreting our new social rules in a way that is making more people sick. No, it is not people in their 20’s although this is a useful stereotype, it is people like my former friend above who feels that they can socially distance using their own rules. I hope they read this article. Today, over 30% of new cases in Ontario were reported in Ottawa. But let the summer roll on.

I apologized to this person. Then I told her that we can’t do multiple bubbles as some people seem to be doing. Most of our children and their partners work in health care, some in very high-risk communities. We have elderly mothers in residences that both have had outbreaks.

Our social bubble consists of three people and it has to stay that way.

This is the thing. If you are going to flaunt our new social conventions, if you are going to do whatever you want because you can somehow justify this please keep it to yourself. When you post on Instagram or Facebook, you are making your actions public. If someone makes a comment maybe you should think about that. Maybe you can take some direction from what people are saying.

We now all live in the same backyard. You no longer get to do what you want. Your actions can certainly have an impact on others. We are all trying to stay safe while we wait for a vaccine or treatment. Once you tell people what you are doing you are opening yourself up to public comment or in some cases censure.

The pandemic is tough. I am finding that social media has more of an edge to it now. People take offence easily, people strike back quickly. We don’t have the normal face-to-face relationships to tamper down this negative energy. We are all in our homes writing and commenting furiously.

I have had my share of dustups in the past few months, some pretty upsetting. We all have to be so careful in what we say and write, but the blow-ups will continue to happen, sometimes when you least expect it.

In some cases, I am sorry for the disagreements. In some cases, I am happy to be free of some people. We will continue to tear up relationships online as the pandemic continues. In most cases, this is just part of the shedding that probably should have happened anyways.

We all probably need to cull the annoying people who still don’t seem to understand that we are in a pandemic. But for the ones we keep, people need to realize we are living in a closer world. We really have to think about how we present ourselves and what we say.

This is a brittle world and it will be difficult to put back the pieces.

COVID Journal # 5 Breaking up is hard to do

On By paulmcguire2013In Life in the Times of COVID - 19, voicEd Radio4 Comments

Today has been an interesting day. Earlier I had an incredible conversation with a colleague of mine on how to teach online in the fall. I am still digesting this, but what struck me the most was the notion that when we teach online, the first thing we need to do is consider the emotional health of our audience.

We need to find new ways to draw everyone in, make sure in our isolated spaces that everyone is part of the conversation. This will mean, among other things, that I will need to have a one-on-one conversation with every student I work with in the fall. If I don’t do this I will lose them and it will be my fault.

Today’s conversation was an eye-opener to me. I don’t know if many of us have figured this out yet – apart from teachers who have been working through this since the middle of March.

For the rest of us, I don’t think we understand yet that most social media is unidirectional. It is designed for conversations between two people. Three becomes a crowd.

In the old pre-COVID days, conversations could become organic, especially when one or two people monopolized the conversation. In the classroom, you could redirect. In the living room, you could start a side conversation and effectively move things along. People could pick up on cues, they could usually use their social skills to sense the room.

Now, this isn’t happening. A few days ago I saw a tweet from someone who has become part of a podcast I used to really enjoy. They were asking for feedback on how the show was going. In the past, the music had been great, there had been room for many voices and lots of music suggestions.

The same show now has become a conversation between two, or maybe three people. It has lost the ability to be inclusive –  it is misreading the room. This is part of my response for feedback on the show:

The show now seems a little like a conversation for two or sometimes three people. It used to be more inclusive, more of a community – not any longer. Maybe this is what the pandemic has done.

Our current communication systems can’t allow for more than one or two voices. We haven’t figured out yet how to be inclusive and allow relationships to grow online. This will be a challenge for all of us.

This kind of pushback usually doesn’t turn out well, but after mulling this over for a few days, I felt I needed to write something. More than ever before, people need to reach out and build community.

What spurred me onto this was my last meeting with my book club. We have been meeting online since the pandemic and for me, this hasn’t worked out too well. We have been together for more than fifteen years, but I don’t know if we will survive the pandemic.

Tonight I sat through a conversation that was almost exclusively between three people. It was sad to be there. I had actually looked forward to our conversation, but there was no way to become part of what was going on. No one took the social cues, the conversation was not inclusive. I left the meeting abruptly, but I did tell the group that the conversation no longer worked.

As a group, we are not adept at creating a community online. The radio show I commented on has also lost its ability to do this. We seem now to only be able to connect in groups of two or three. More than that seems to be beyond us and our grasp of the current technology.

We can no longer retreat to the classroom or the livingroom to restore community. These options are out of reach for the foreseeable future. We will have to become much more mindful of the importance of inclusiveness in a world dominated by unidirectional communication.

I am breaking up with my book club. It is not their fault, but I need real community, real human relations. The challenge for the fall will be to make sure none of my students end up feeling as I did tonight. Everything I do will have to be about building community and trust with the imperfect tools we have at our disposal.

We all need to be doing this. We are responsible for building and sustaining important positive relationships. Look around you, think again, we need to do much better to sustain each other for the times to come.

Covid Journal # 4 Walking the Walk

On By paulmcguire2013In Life in the Times of COVID - 191 Comment

And now as long as space endures,
As long as there are beings to be found,
May I continue likewise to remain
To drive away the sorrows of the world.

—Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva

I think it is important to continue to write these journal entries. It will be good to have something to look back on once all of this is over.

Today I did another of the COVID walks I have been doing for the last month. It was a long one – over 8 kilometres. I have a constant companion, our dog Dory who patiently goes on these treks no matter what the weather is like.

Dory

I almost always take photos on these walks and post them on Instagram and Facebook. The photos mirror a bit my mood on these long walks – thoughtful, a little sad, taking in the stillness.

COVID Walk Today

Today I listened to a Pema Chödrön talk called Walking the Walk: Putting the teachings in practice when it matters most. I have included the first nine minutes of her talk here. The quote at the beginning of this post comes from this talk and is repeated by the participants in this retreat at the end of each session. In the passage, she talks about a young Buddhist monk who is told by his master that one day he would travel to teach people in North American. His mentor explains that there he will find people who will be much more interested in staying asleep than waking up.

This is a really good talk and I listened to it for the rest of my walk.

It does describe in some ways what I see going on right now. We are probably into the 10th week of the pandemic. The initial rush of ‘we are all in this together’ is now well over. The crisis is not nearly over, it is just morphing into a new and more challenging phase.

The violence and protests in the United States are part of this pandemic. The growing anger I see on social media is part of this too. The uncertainty about what the future holds now is a big part of what the pandemic looks like.

The uncertainty about what the school year will look like in September is palatable. While large events continue to get cancelled right up to and past next September what will schools look like? Already many universities are saying that classes will be online. There are new webinars offered almost daily by my university on how to adapt courses to an online environment.

What will elementary and secondary school look like in September? We do need to do some waking up as suggested by Pema Chödrön. The pandemic is here to stay for the foreseeable future. The initial rush is over, we are now in this for the very long haul and we need to open our eyes to this reality. I don’t think we are talking about this enough, maybe we need another few sleeps.

Many experts say that things really won’t change until there is a good treatment or a vaccine. Vaccines take years to make and many are only partly successful. The disruptions that we are experiencing now many lift, but only temporarily. Last week, one infected doctor in New Brunswick was able to expose over 150 people to the virus and effectively shut the province down again. (New Brunswick copes with return to lockdown after increase in COVID-19 cases – Globe and Mail, Monday, June 1)

It only takes one person to lock us all down again.

Wake up Wake up! We are in this for a very long time and we all need to start looking at how we are going to live in a very new world.

Schools have to look at how they are going to structure things to reopen in September. They will need a better plan than what we have seen in Quebec where schools with an outbreak close for two days, clean up and go at it again.

Wake up Wake up! We need to see our world with new eyes. Every sector of our society has to change. We need to start asking ourselves some very hard questions. From what I have seen, we are not doing this.

Cycling back to the violence in the States, this lack of awareness is limiting our deeper understanding of the swirling crisis that envelopes us. John Doyle writes about all-news coverage in the United States

When is the real life of American cities covered? Where is the punditry and analysis of the vast racial disparity in health and wealth? What this current crisis illuminates is all-news TV’s preference for extolling itself. It’s not the real basis for the protests and riots that matter, it’s the alleged bravery of its peacocking reporters on the inflamed streets.

Globe and Mail – American all-news TV is fundementally unfit to cover this crisis

Are we fit to understand and really grasp the depth of the crisis that we are in? Are any of us taking the long view on this or are we still trying to sleep through this by finding more and more distractions?

Maybe we all need to take a very long walk, listen to Pema Chödrön and start the process of waking up to this new and daunting reality. It’s not going anywhere soon.

another COVID shot

Covid Journal # 2 – Asking the Right Questions

On By paulmcguire2013In Life in the Times of COVID - 19, Poverty in Schools1 Comment

I saw this post from Stephen Hurley on April 24th. We are not there yet, but he is right to put this out. In the midst of the first truly global crisis many of us have ever seen it is right to start asking some really hard questions. Are we ready to do this?

This is a hard thing to do. Today I am reading articles in the New York Times where they are doing a great job of creating a record of some of the nightmares that are happening in the United Staes right now.

Gladys Vega, a longtime community activist, helped a man who had been banished to a freezing, unfinished dirt basement, where he was riding out the illness on a piece of cardboard. Another man had been sent to sleep on a porch, despite temperatures that still dropped below freezing at night.

“People are being treated as if they have leprosy,” said Ms. Vega, executive director of the Chelsea Collaborative.

New York Times Sunday, April 26th, 2020 – In a Crowded City, Leaders Struggle to Separate the Sick From the Well 

This is what we need to be doing right now. We need to read the stories. We can’t become too isolated. Our social infrastructure is so broken that those who live in poverty, those without what should be the necessary resources are dying terrible deaths.

While the situation here in Canada is better, at least for now, medical workers are doing incredibly heroic service in a system that was already at over 100% capacity before the crisis hit. It is a marvel that they are able to do this. We can’t ever forget this.

We are scrambling in other areas as well. As many post pictures of their latest bread creation, teachers are struggling to connect to students who, in many cases, do not have the resources to learn from home. How many educators are spending sleepless nights worrying about their students?

While we have known for years that hard to serve communities needed to have computers and internet services to effectively link to their schools we did nothing about this. We didn’t provide computers for home use, we didn’t think that was something that schools were supposed to do. We were woefully underprepared for a crisis like this.

Those with the resources can surf through a crisis like this. Those without are suffering in silence.

So how do we start asking the hard questions?

Do we really ever look at how we distribute our resources in a rich country like Canada? Are we willing to be really critical about the level of health care services that we make available to every person here in this country? Are we really willing to offer excellent support, the support that is needed in low-income communities? Do we really want to support those who do not have a voice in our communities?

It is too easy to condemn our neighbours to the south. We love to congratulate ourselves saying that things are so much better here. Is this true?

Is a vital social infrastructure really our first priority? When we see the gaps what do we do? Where do we put our resources? Why do we allow so much inequality to exist?

These are the questions I would like to put out there now. After the Second World War, the world really changed in significant ways. We started to realize the importance of new institutions like the United Nations, and the importance of seeing ourselves as global citizens. Poverty and ignorance caused the war so we had to find ways to combat these evils.

Our world changed. Will it change now? Or, will we just go back to Major League Baseball and let all this slide?

The death toll is already staggering. Just as after the war, we need to mourn the terrible loss, but we need to do so much more. Can we make the incredible effort once again to really change how we all live and how we look after our most vulnerable?

I am a cynic. I don’t know if we really learn from a crisis. I think people just want to make sure they can get their hair cut again. I don’t see the big questions being asked.

I really hope I am wrong, but can we actually make the incredible changes that need to be undertaken?

I would love to be wrong on this one.

Living in the Times of Covid – 19: A Journal

On By paulmcguire2013In Climbing Kilimanjaro, Hope, Leaning in, Life in the Times of COVID - 191 Comment

So, I reorganized my CD collection, sent a video to my mom and put a silly picture on Facebook. My very busy agenda for the day is complete. I am thinking now it is time to start an on-line journal on our days staying inside.

Just to be clear, none of this will be me complaining. I have a sister-in-law who is a nurse in Montreal, our daughter and her partner and our daughter-in-law are all front-line health care workers. They are the ones I know who are actually going through challenging times now.

Thank-you Norma, stay safe!

This is more of a reflection piece. Where was my mind at during the Pandemic?

If you can see the photo I put up on Facebook, you can get a sense of where my head is at. I really think, number one, the idea needs to be stay stable, don’t go off the deep end, this is a really weird time.

But at some point, we will all go over the deep end.

Two nights ago during a Zoom book club, I didn’t follow my own advice. I had spent an hour listening to the daily presser with Donald Trump fact-checked by Now This News. It is really good because they fact-check Trump in realtime. Good, but very disturbing.

Going from this train wreck to a discussion on books about hiking was a little too much. I erupted about Trump, about trekking books, about everything. If my Zoom partners could have backed further away from their computer they certainly would have. For good reason, my state of mind is now a discussion item and I can hardly blame people for that.

Trying to keep an even keel these days is a real challenge!

We all have minor and major disappointments. We can’t see our friends and family. Everyone is seeing opportunities and plans go up in smoke. In the very worst cases of course, many people are dying terrible deaths.

There was an incredible article in the Sunday New York Times – He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus.

It is a long article – four pages in the NY Times.It really outlines in gruesome detail how President Trump hid from what was coming. Then I read an amazing piece by Nicholas Kristof, Life and Death in the Hot Zone. Here is the video he made of his time in a COVID ward.

 

So, I think we need to do a bit of both. We need to send out the silly photos, we need to share our pictures about baking bread and we need to read good pieces on hiking too. We need to do it all. We need to face up to what is happening too.

There is no balance in the time of COVID -19. There are highs and lows and all are good. We need to witness the terrible and we can’t turn our faces away from the corrupt and stupid. Somehow, we need to find a way to see both.

For me right now, the best I can do is write. Yes, it is a bit of an apology for a wonky state of mind, but we all need to acknowledge that this is a different time. Terrible for some scary and uncertain for everyone.

If this works I will keep writing, maybe tomorrow.

In the meantime, take care everyone!

ps – I leave you with this – while I don’t really like books on trekking I love trekking videos – definitely, to each their own!