Taking A Community's Temperature

Peter Gow

Lately one of the listservs I follow has blown up with a conversation about taking the temperatures of students and staff during a COVID-19 outbreak. The conversation has ranged from the technological (What gadgets to use?) to the medical (When? What about asymptomatic folks?) to the legal (Liability? Prudent practice?) to the financial and HR-related ($27,000 for one unit? Who does the scanning? What will they wear?). But I’m neither an engineer, a doctor, a lawyer, nor a businessperson, so I’ve stayed out of it.

But there is another kind of temperature-taking that needs to be done regularly and even more often and thoroughly in a time of crisis. A fevered brow may be a sign of physical illness, but let’s not forget for one second that the differential experiences of our students and their families (and of our staff members and their families) can be sources of enormous stress that impact every aspect of their lives, even in “normal circumstances.” As schools prepare for 2020–21 to be possibly even more strange and potentially stressful than this spring has been, it is incumbent on every school’s administration to make an intentional scan of these experiences, perhaps broken down by demographics and then scrutinized, case by case.

Let’s start with some categories into which members of your school community likely fall:

• Students, families, faculty, and staff of color
• Students, families, faculty, and staff who are members of religious minorities
• Students, families, faculty, and staff who are not native speakers of English
• International students at residential schools or schools with home-stay programs, and their  often far-flung families
• Students and families receiving need-based financial aid
• Students, families, faculty, and staff with, or caring for those with, physical disabilities
• Students from single-parent households
• Students who regularly care for siblings or older adult household members
• Students in foster care or who are being cared for by someone other than a birth parent or parents
• Students who normally move between two or more households based on parental situations
• Students with especially long commutes—that is, who live in relative isolation from other members of the school community
• Students whose gender identity is fluid or who may not express gender identity in traditional ways
• Students with identified learning differences, and especially those who require interventions and accommodations at or through school—and those who require off-campus support
• Gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender students
• Student athletes, and especially those whose future prospects are perceived to be linked to athletic performance

​​
Now is a good time to review what is known or may be surmised based on evidence regarding the experience of members of these “groups” (I like to think of them as demographic slices) during the current crisis and then to consider how best to plan for and provide appropriate supports if ’20–21 were to bring either more of the same—or to be even more unsettled.

You may not have either considered or conducted a survey that addresses the special situations of each group, but as a school you have anecdotal evidence that is worth gathering for review. And none of us live in a vacuum, so try to empathetically project what you may have read or heard in reliable news media or what you know from educational writing into the lives and situations of those in your own community. (This is an excellent habit to cultivate in yourself and collectively in your leadership team, by the way.)

You might even set up a protocol for this discussion:

• What do we know about the experiences of this demographic slice for our own direct experience as a school?
• What might we surmise about those experiences based on reading and other knowledge?
• As a school, what do we do to recognize the needs of or to support those in this demographic in normal circumstances?
• As a school, where do we know or suspect that we have fallen short in this support in normal circumstances?
• As a school, how might we offer more effective and meaningful support in the future?
• How or with what “experts” or other inputs might we test ideas for offering more effective and meaningful support?
• How might we begin to define and structure support services if we must continue operating in online or hybrid mode?
• What resources will need to be marshaled and prepared in order to provide these services effectively?
• What are we perhaps NOT considering with regard to supporting this demographic slice?

No, this protocol is not simple nor elegant, but our work is to support all of our community members as best we can, and we must do this—now more than ever—intentionally and with all the active empathy we can muster.
​
We accept that time is the most valuable commodity in schools and it is short supply, but right now time is of the essence in preparing for 2020–21. Along with pondering the acquisition of thermometric scanners and the creation of new waiver forms, schools must take the time to imagine how best to care for every member of their communities and then how to put in place the best ideas for making this care a standard practice, whether online, hybrid, or comfortably settled into desks and chairs on campus.

---

---

If you missed our recent Academic Leaders Webinar with Gene Batiste, chief diversity office at St. John School in Houston TX & chief catalyst with Gene Batiste Consulting, on fostering diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in the online space - check that out here.