Head of Campus
The courage to communicate
These days, big data is big business. It feels like I’m asked to complete a survey at every turn: whether I’ve made an online purchase, had a pizza delivered or parked my car near a supermarket, the emails come through asking politely for me to volunteer my feedback on the enlisted, or adjacent, businesses. Of course, the purpose of most of these surveys is to gather, and potentially on-sell, data about me as a consumer. This data is then used to sell me, the consumer, more stuff more regularly.
So, I can understand the ‘survey fatigue’ you may feel when we send out another request for feedback from the School. While we aren’t using your input for nefarious, capitalist purposes, we do indeed gather, value and reflect on the data they generate to make the best decisions we can for our students.
Surveys have a special place in our desire to understand the cumulative and varied perspectives of our school community. Traditionally, the variety of perspectives we draw from to make decisions have been limited. They came through emails, personal conversations or hearsay, and as we know, it can take a certain kind of motivation, and a lot of emotional energy, to write an email with feedback.
Surveys, on the other hand, allow us to get a measure of the big picture, as well as individual circumstances.
About three weeks into our first round of Online Learning, it felt like there were too many improvements to be made in too little time. Your responses to the Parent/Family Online Learning Survey showed that 88% of families were highly confident to reach out to the School for help, which was incredibly reassuring and allowed us to put things in perspective.
The ‘Student Survey: Pandemic Edition’ conducted at the end of last term gave us incredibly valuable data to understand student preferences for balancing onsite and online learning, as well as identifying student needs. We discovered that approximately 20% of students preferred learning online, which was an encouragement for us to make the change to complete offsite learning arrangements for DP students on their Wednesday timetable. To complement this, there was a strong thematic concern in the qualitative data which showed that students needed greater responsiveness from their teachers when offsite; this was fed back to the teaching staff, and formed one of the critical and ongoing priorities for us this term.
Conversely, it has been so important and valuable to me when people have reached out to express their individual perspectives and circumstances. I appreciated the recent email exchanges and discussions about our 'Clean Slate on Compass' decision for MYP and the ‘Independent Learning Day’ for DP students. Parents and students had the courage, and took the time, to write to us expressing their views on these changes and justified their positions. These justifications allowed us to make amendments where we could or ensure that we took all perspectives into consideration.
While it isn’t possible to please everyone, it is our absolute commitment to ensure we weigh up arguments carefully and fairly. For a school so committed to philosophy, our community should expect no less.
Now that we have the benefit of hindsight and prior experience, reflection is our most powerful tool. As it has been a couple of weeks since the ‘Clean Slate’ and ‘Independent Learning Day’ changes and we are living in the consequences of these decisions, we want to know how things have gone.
The ‘Clean Slate’ decision, in particular, was complex. Some parents pointed out the dangers of learned helplessness, as well as the need for students to learn to adopt more resilient and forgiving attitudes to their past selves, rather than propagating shame.
What I’ve gained from all of this is an increased pride in our community that is truly united by goodwill, integrity and the courage to communicate.
Dan Symons
Head of Campus