The moment we are living is challenging for everyone involved in the educational process: the children, the educational team, the administrative team, and the families. Even knowing that the current context and conditions are not ideal compared to what we believe that school can be and can provide to meet the needs of children and parents, when it comes to organization at home, schedule, and routine, we made an effort to look in depth at our current situation and have taken steps to make the best out of it, considering all those who are participating in this process.
With this in mind and following the Municipal Department of Education’s decree regarding the mandatory return of children to the school space – which so far is optional, at each family’s discretion –, be.Living is offering two educational proposals for 2021: An exclusively remote proposal aimed at families who still feel insecure about their children returning to school, and a hybrid proposal, i.e., in-person and remote teaching, which will take place both at home and at school facilities.
We have always thought of school as a community, a microsociety whose wheels turn only when everyone is involved. For children to return to the school space in a safe and meaningful way, we believe that each one must take their share of collective responsibility, making a steadfast and sincere commitment to ensure the children’s safety, with warmth and empathy.
We believe that being strict about security protocols is an act of love. We were pleased to note, in these first days of contact with our students, that the use of masks and the practice of hand hygiene are already embedded into the children’s behavior. We will remain firm in complying with all of the recommendations of Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein regarding the disposition and maintenance of spaces and procedures for interaction, hygiene, and organization that favor health and social distancing.
For everything to go well in hybrid teaching, it is very important that the families are also committed to observing and informing the school about any symptoms, however small, that the child or another family member shows. In such cases, the child should remain at home for 14 days or until a PCR test result (if the family chooses to take it) comes back negative for Covid. This care and attention is paramount to keeping other children in our community safe. Similarly, children or families who for some reason are in contact with a greater number of people, hence at higher risk of contagion, are also emphatically asked to go through a quarantine period, in a gesture of generosity and empathy aimed at protecting other members of our community.
If a child tests positive for Covid and has to stay away from school, our educational team has created works that can be applied to each class; however, the teachers will be mindful, on a case-by-case basis, of the needs of each child who is away, so as to preserve our ever-present characteristic of welcoming each individual in our teaching-learning process.
Today, we believe that it is time to celebrate the possibility of having more frequency and time at school. Gabriela Fernandes, our Elementary School educational coordinator, explains that hybrid teaching is completely different from remote teaching. “This educational program was created and has been used in the United States for some time, and has been studied in Brazil since 2014. It’s a form of work in which the child has a time for study at school, guided by the teacher, and a time for study outside the school, at home. One form of study complements the other. The great insight of hybrid teaching is to provide children a sense of ownership. This year, we’ll bring hybrid teaching into our idea of education, which works with the child within the whole context of the school process.”
She said that be.Living’s weekly organization of hybrid work came from an effort to get as close as possible to what life is in our school under normal circumstances. “Learning will take place in-person 3, 4, or 5 days a week, depending on the class, when we’ll provide children moments and lessons that they are quite used to experience at school, within what be.Living offers; learning will also happen in the synchronous proposals that they’ve become used to in 2020, which are the classes on Zoom, with real-time monitoring; it will take place during the specialist teachers’ classes twice a week; finally, it will happen with autonomous work through diversified activities, which has always been a major strength of our Elementary School. The idea is to get children back to school and get the school back to school. We want the children to be able to develop their own planning skills, so that we can gradually remove the parents from this process, because everything rested very much on their shoulders last year. The children said phrases like “My mother didn’t remind me,” as if everything was their mothers’ responsibility. The idea is that the children understand once again that this is their own responsibility.” According to Gabriela, be.Living’s hybrid teaching model seeks to establish a routine that works both for our current situation and for future in-person learning, or even in case of a lockdown.
And speaking of routine, while talking stock of last year as educators and scholars of child behavior, the lack of it for children during the pandemic really drew our attention. We know that it would be impossible to implement a routine when isolation began, with so many uncertainties, anxieties, and sudden changes, and that routine is much easier to build when children come to school. Our idea is that now, with hybrid teaching, we can join forces – school, children, and families – and together re-establish a routine that provides the children with safety and confidence to learn and develop.
“We believe that routine means safety, both for adults and for children. School is a place of schedules and routines. It’s an emotional regulator for children. When they come school, they have desks, chairs, backpacks, pencil cases, calendars. It’s different when children do the same work sitting at their school desk, next to their colleagues, their posture changes and their productivity changes as well. They’ll have a calendar and remote education will be outlined on it. We’ll organize the following week together with them on the previous week, so that the children already know what will happen in their lives, so that they can organize themselves, with both our support and the parents’. This is the place we want to bring families and children back to. We will continue to give them autonomous work. At home, it’s important to let them do things, let them not know, so that they return to school with this difficulty and, together with the teacher the next day, or after a day, they remember what it’s like to elaborate a question, what it’s like to share and build knowledge,” Gabriela explained.
As a school, hybrid teaching expands our possibilities of work and intervention, restoring consistency in our teachers’ work, and increasing our chances of realizing our expectations for the 2021 and 2022 curricula.
Home is still an extension of school, but it is not school. This difference is very important. The spaces are distinct but, at the same time, are all for knowledge. Therefore, it is important to watch over them. Face-to-face moments are essential, and when children are out of school, it is necessary to be mindful of time and space as rigorously as possible, because they are our great allies in this stage of learning.
We appreciate the effort that mothers and fathers are making to bring their children on the days and hours predetermined by us. We tried our best to accommodate everyone, especially those who have children in different years, but we know that for many families the schedule was not ideal. Putting together this grid was like putting together a great puzzle in which we had to consider not only the pieces but also the amount of pieces in play, and unfortunately the combination of some groups was not possible due to the limited number of children at school. Therefore, once again, we thank all of you for your commitment and understanding!
