I’ve been struggling thinking about how to address this post. Since my original plan for an online course, my ideas have expanded to include teaching and learning about racism, diversity and inclusion. This is partly because is it important to me as a person, but also because it is important work that our board is doing. I was selected to be part of the advisory council for discussions around racism and inclusion. So much of our work included discussions about how and when we could introduce this professional learning to staff. I want to bring these discussions into our school, and asynchronous discussions may not be the best way to do so with difficult topics like these. With those factors in mind, I started considering how the teaching staff were starting these discussions, and how fortunate I am to have been included. My work involves a lot of bridging the gap between support and teaching staff, as well as between families, communities and the school.
When I thought about facilitating an online discussion with my cohort of support staff, I immediately went to the time constraints that exist within our positions. However, some of the learning that I think we could be doing, could easily be structured in to non-school days or at the beginning or end of a shift to earn lieu time. With the important discussions necessary for developing a safe and caring school, I think that managing the workload was my first most important thought.
By making the timing for using Google Meets or Microsoft teams to begin the discussions a priority, purposeful discussions would be expected once the expectations are established synchronously. This is extremely important work, and needs to be approached thoughtfully and respectfully. As a facilitator in this work, I recognize that I have my own biases and privileges that may affect my own perceptions, and modelling how to “check myself” would be necessary.
Having been through these discussions in many formats now, I know how important this work is to everyone, and I don’t anticipate there would be much difficulty in engaging us in the discussions, once the barriers to doing so have been removed or addressed.
