School Leadership during COVID-19: Learning From Past Crises
Not many crises in the recent past parallel the length, depth, and metamorphic potential of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, which has disrupted education in an unprecedented way. In India, especially, the numbers are alarming: 320 million children are currently affected by the crisis, out of which 65% are from rural or tribal areas with little to no access to digital learning initiatives, and the financial blowback from the crisis has severely impacted low-fee private schools: an exploratory survey conducted by Central Square Foundation across seven states found that none of the schools surveyed collected fees during the lockdown in April and May, and over half of them had uncollected dues pending from the previous year, amounting to between 13% and 80% of their annual revenue.
However, schools (and school leaders) around the world have always dealt with disasters, school closures, infrastructural damage, and traumatised communities. From earthquakes to fires to public health concerns, there are lessons to be learnt from a history of school leaders who have had to step up and rebuild their school communities (and perhaps reframe their own roles as leaders) after various disasters. The following article draws on literature about crisis leadership from all over the world, and particularly from school leaders in 3 case studies:
- The Great East Japan Earthquake (Japan, 2011)
- Canterbury earthquakes (New Zealand, 2010–11)
- Missouri Tornado (United States, 2011)
A brief introduction to crisis leadership:
Boin, ‘t Hart, McConnell and Preston (2010) define crisis leadership as, “recognizing emerging threats, initiating efforts to mitigate them and deal with their consequences and, once the acute crisis period has passed, re- establishing a sense of normalcy”. What sets crisis leadership apart from general leadership practices is the urgency, complexity, and dynamism of situations in which leaders must operate.
In a case study of the Canterbury earthquakes of 2011 (which we will explore in more detail below), the author uses her extensive review of international literature to design a framework for describing the responses of schools and school leaders to the Canterbury earthquakes. The phases are: (a) pre-event preparation; (b) pre-event warning; © event; (d) immediate response; (e) short term response; (f) initial recovery; (g) medium term recovery; (h) long term recovery; and (i) reflection and evaluation.
This framework is a helpful way to view some of the themes that emerge in the following article; however, it is also important to keep in mind that the phases themselves are fluid — school culture, for example, is an important part of almost every single phase. Following are five themes that emerged as patterns of effective and successful practices for school leaders to adopt as they navigate their way through a global pandemic.
- Preparedness:
In the Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE) — dubbed a “megadisaster” — of 2011, schools across Japan found themselves playing an important role as the community tried to survive the earthquake. Importantly, they provided both civil protection “hardware” and “software”: school buildings served as evacuation shelters and transition shelters, and the school curricula had already ensured that children knew how to prepare for and react in emergencies through a rigorous Disaster Risk Management training (DRM). The DRM was effective to the point of miraculous: in Kamaishi, where the number of casualties reached 1,000, there were 5 deaths reported among 2,900 school children, and not a single child present in school that day was killed.
There are direct connections between the GEJE and the current COVID-19 situation: although we were unable to predict the COVID-19 pandemic, we might be able to facilitate a smoother transition back to regular schooling with training on such topics as personal hygiene and self-protection once students are back in school. We might also consider how to strengthen school structures that have a direct bearing on student safety, such as midday meals in government schools.
2. Coalitions and collaborations:
Deborah Jewell-Sherman, faculty at Harvard Graduate School of Education, highlights four things to keep in mind in her recent talk for school leaders navigating this uncertain situation; one of these four key points is building networks for collaboration and sharing of best practices. This viewpoint is backed by research from the Joplin school district in the United States, which faced a deadly tornado in May 2011 that killed 158 people and injured more than 1000.
Anticipating the impact of the 2008 financial crisis (three years before the tornado hit), the school district had prepared for the impact of the financial crisis and reduced state funding. Hoping to pass a future building project, building coalitions had been a top priority. The district had spent considerable time “going to ribbon cuttings and meeting community organization leaders and business owners face-to-face, creating a strong network of support” — unaware of how important these coalitions would be in the coming years.
When the tornado hit, and left more than 4,200 students without a school to attend, the school district had to design and build temporary facilities in less than three months in order to reopen the school district in time for the next academic year. In this process, school leaders found themselves relying on the connections they had made in the last few years: business owners, local construction companies, the local utility company, and other commercial service providers all came together to help the school district rebuild.
3. Multi Stakeholder Dialogue
As the example of the Joplin coalitions indicates, collaboration between different members of the community is key to rebuilding a community. A similar theme emerged from the GEJE report as well.
There were a few key learnings from the earthquake: one, that schools needed to focus on education continuity — some schools ended up being shelters for a longer time than anticipated — and two, that teacher shortage was one of the key issues in continuing education. While local university students tried to fill the gap, the difficulty in continuing education prompted officials to realise that more community members needed to be involved in the rebuilding process. This would ensure that everyone in the community could be involved in not just the reconstruction process, but also in the reframing of the school’s role in the community.
This point is particularly relevant in India. Given the changing conditions around schooling, especially in rural and remote geographic areas where digital initiatives are not possible, working with the community’s various stakeholders becomes even more important. As we move towards a future where schooling is poised to look very different for a very long time — if not permanently — involving parents and other community bodies will allow us to explore how schools can center communities and continue education during this crisis.
4. Culture
Apart from outward connections, the literature also emphasizes connections within schools. A case study of school leaders during the Canterbury (New Zealand) earthquakes of 2010 highlights, among other things, the importance of a strong school culture. The earthquake, which killed 185 people, was to be followed by over 12,000 aftershocks over the next three years, including several over magnitude 6. All educational institutions were closed for several weeks following the two major earthquakes, and became a government priority as the region began to deal with the death and destruction.
Describing the behavior of the school leaders during the crisis, the report highlights that they “reiterated the values of their organisation, they simultaneously managed prompt decision making with longer term recovery strategy.” These leaders, building on the strong organizational cultures they had created, supported their teachers and the larger school community while trying to phase out the various tasks at hand. They engaged actively in response and recovery and made sure to raise the spirits of their communities — through emotional support and regular communication, two methods also highlighted in the Joplin case study. These school leaders were not only able to lead their schools to a gradual recovery, but also weave their school communities together.
5. Reflection
According to the Joplin case study, a moment of reflection can have an impact on how school leaders respond to the crisis. Previous literature has established the importance of reflection in effective planning (Smith and Riley, 2012) — one school leader in the Joplin district recalls that a quiet moment of reflection led him to better consider the emerging needs as well as the current strengths and weaknesses of his leadership team.
Additionally, the Joplin case also emphasizes the emotional impact of reflection on school leaders. School leaders recalled reflecting on experiences such as receiving aid or watching their students react to school administrative staff coming to check on them — these reflections impacted their response to the needs of their teachers and students.
Extended Crisis Leaders: A Permanent Evolution?
We have seen that the literature can help us understand how to deal with the changes that crises can bring when thinking about school leadership. The Canterbury case study has also shown us that a school leader’s role can be organised into phases over the course of a crisis. However, many of these crises are one-time events, have a defined aftermath, and typically have already-existing bodies of knowledge for schools to draw upon. What happens to the role of a school leader when there is no end in sight to the crisis? Such a situation is made harder when the crisis in question is new and scientists are still working to figure out what is causing it and how to end it — this, of course, is the circumstance in which we currently find ourselves.
The question then becomes: does the COVID-19 crisis have the potential to change the role of a school leader in permanent ways? While there are no real answers in the current literature to this question, we can look at lessons from the past and blend them into our current approach as we build our own collection of strategies to reimagine leadership and empower schools to ensure that education is continued.
References
Ranghieri, F., & Ishiwatari, M. (Eds.). (2014). Learning From Megadisasters, Lessons from the great east Japan earthquake. Retrieved October 20, 2020.
Goswick, J., Macgregor, C., Hurst, B., Wall, P., & White, R. (2017, November 06). Lessons identified by the Joplin School Leadership after responding to a Catastrophic Tornado. Retrieved October 20, 2020, from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-5973.12216
Foote, E. (1995, November 30). Weathering the Storm: Leadership during Crisis. Retrieved October 20, 2020, from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ526247
Anderson, J. (2020, April 16). Harvard EdCast: School Leadership During Crisis. Retrieved October 20, 2020, from https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/20/04/harvard-edcast-school-leadership-during-crisis
Heifetz, R., Grashow, A., & Linsky, M. (2009). Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis. Retrieved October 20, 2020.
UNESCO, U. (2020, September 08). Education: From disruption to recovery. Retrieved October 20, 2020, from https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse
Boin, Arjen & Hart, Paul & Mcconnell, Allan & Preston, Thomas. (2010). Leadership Style, Crisis Response and Blame Management: The Case of Hurricane Katrina. Public Administration. 88. 706–723. 10.1111/j.1467–9299.2010.01836.x.
Mutch, Carol. (2015). The impact of the Canterbury earthquakes on schools and school leaders: Educational leaders become crisis managers. Journal of Educational Leadership Policy and Practice. 3. 59.
Smith, L., & Riley, D. (2012, February 2). School leadership in times of crisis. Retrieved October 20, 2020, from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13632434.2011.614941
Nangia, A. & Kapadia, D. (2020, June). How Crisis-Proof are Private Schools? Central Square Foundation.
Appendix
The crisis leadership framework from the Canterbury case study broken down into phase-wise practices (Mutch 2015).