Ora Wexler:
Good afternoon. My name is Ora Wexler. I'm the Brandeis Class of 2004 and along with Ana Lobo, who was an IBS student Class of 2012. We are the co-presidents of the Brandeis Alumni Club of Toronto. It's our pleasure to present today's program, There's No Turning Back K-12 Education in a Post COVID-19 World, with our very special guest Anand Mahadevan, Brandeis master science Class of 2003. While this program is organized by the Brandeis Alumni Club of Toronto, it really is designed to showcase the alumni knowledge, talent, and community of Brandeisians across Canada. And we are pleased to grow this national Brandeis Canada community with registrants from BC to the Maritimes and beyond. As you likely know, in normal times, the Brandeis Alumni Association organizes events throughout the year in various communities with large numbers of alumni.
Ora Wexler:
But as you also know, these are far from normal times and the Brandeis community has responded accordingly with all virtual events that have expanded the Brandeis community footprint, connecting alumni across time zones and fields of interest from big cities to small towns here in Canada, the US and around the world. Our event format for today includes Anand's presentation followed by a discussion between Anand and fellow alumna, Myra Novogrodsky, Brandeis Class of 1968. Afterwards, we will have an opportunity for a Q&A period. So feel free to pose any questions in the Q&A block. But first I want to pass things off to Brandeis trustee, Mark Surchin, Brandeis Class of 1978, and immediate past president of the Brandeis University Alumni Association for some remarks and an introduction of the current Brandeis Canada scholar, Brittany Dean, Class of 2022.
Mark Surchin:
Thank you very much, Ora and welcome to everyone across Canada from coast to coast to coast and some beyond. I just wanted to say hello as a member of the board of trustees who is Canadian. I'll be quick, but I'll say that I grew up in Montreal and I went to Westmount High School, which some of you may know is where Kamala Harris also graduated from, but not in my year or anywhere near it, to be honest. And when I graduated, I made the decision to go to university in the US and I've never looked back. I had a fantastic education at Brandeis and made lifelong friends. I had to make a big decision, like many of us at the end of my time there as to whether I would stay in the US or return to Canada.
Mark Surchin:
And I ended up back here in the Great White North with a bit of angst as to whether to go back to Montreal where I grew up or elsewhere. And I might've gone back home, but my late father said to me, if I came back to Montreal, I could live at home again. So to avoid that, I moved to Toronto and I'm a lawyer here now. For some time I wasn't really involved with Brandeis alumni matters, but around 2000, I noticed that there were these clubs or chapters of alumni around the US in fact, elsewhere in the world, but not in Canada. And I left a bit of a chippy comment on the website saying that wasn't right. And lo and behold, within a couple of weeks, Brandeis sent someone up here to meet with me and some of the other local alumni, some of whom I see are on this call and sure enough, within very short order, we had a local club up here in Toronto, which has been going strong for 20 years now.
Mark Surchin:
And we're very happy that we have this club. So it was good that a bit of a complain turned into a good thing. One quick aside, which I guess will be relevant to today's topic, is that because I'm a trustee, I participate in trustee meetings, which of course they're virtual now. And the one we had last week with the administration was all about COVID and what the university is doing. And I really want to reassure everyone, you have a lot to be proud about in terms of how the university is responding to an unparalleled challenge, and we'll post a link in the chat. There it is I think, as to everything the university is doing involving testing and contact tracing and changes in how the classrooms are set up and all of that. So take a look if you're interested.
Mark Surchin:
The last thing I'll say really is that one of the things our club thought of doing under really Myra and Charlie's leadership was set up a Brandeis Canada scholarship. We're very proud of it. It's raised quite a bit of money now, and I want to introduce you to our current scholarship student Brittany Dean who's about to go into junior year. She's from Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, which is where she is right now. She's an active member of the softball team. I'll turn it over to Brittany, really I think I want your fellow Canadians might be interested in knowing Brittany is, how is it that you having heard how I ended up at Brandeis ended up at Brandeis, especially from the West Coast. How's it been going? And have you given any thought yet to what happens for you after graduation?
Brittany Dean:
Yeah. Thank you, Mark. And hello everybody. Yeah. So as far as choosing Brandeis, it really is just the exact opposite side of the continent for me. And the biggest driver that kind of made me decide to go to the United States was softball because the competition in Canadian universities isn't quite the same. So I knew in high school, I was like, "Okay, I'm going to go to the United States for softball, that's the goal." And then having kind of looked at my options senior year of high school, Brandeis was one of them. And I think the biggest thing that led me towards Brandeis was that it was a liberal arts school. And it was also in Boston.
Brittany Dean:
I had heard so many amazing things about the academia in Boston and the surrounding areas. And being a liberal arts school, I didn't really know what that meant at first and reading more into it I realized that it would allow me to kind of follow my path, because I knew I wanted to do science, but it would allow me to do that and also kind of explore my options in other things like English, history, arts. And I thought that was super awesome because I could do that and not be held back and my degree would still be helpful for me, which I was like, "Okay. Yeah, that's sounds amazing."
Brittany Dean:
And another thing that I thought was super cool about Brandeis was the Jewish community was very central and that's something that growing up here on the Island is nothing I had no exposure to the Jewish community either. So I was like, "You know what? This is..." I felt like I was going to learn a lot going. So that's what took me out to Brandeis, I was like, "You know what, how can I learn the most? What can I get out of going all the way over there?" So that's how I got there. How's it been going? The first year, obviously for everybody first year of college is just like, "Oh." So it was a lot because I was coming, I was an international student. I was fresh out of a public high school in Canada. I was like, "I don't really know what I'm doing."
Brittany Dean:
But I transitioned very well into my second year after kind of settling in. I really enjoy being at that school. It's fantastic. Brandeis has taught me a lot. I was correct with my assumption that the liberal arts school was what I wanted. I've really enjoyed exploring my options. I'm thinking about taking a minor in environmental science as well, just because it was something that I ended up taking by fluke to fill the requirement and I was like, "Oh, this is something I'm super interested in." So I've really enjoyed being there. And the softball has been great too. It's allowed me to make a lot of friends, my roommates that I've been with for three years or I guess two of my closest friends and they're on the team as well. So being able to be a part of the team has been great too. And then you asked me if I was going to stay in the US or go back to Canada?
Mark Surchin:
Yeah. If you have any idea yet, which you may not.
Brittany Dean:
Yeah. I mean, yeah, obviously I sort of do because I'm only going into my third year, but it's definitely been a real thing I've been thinking about. The plan is to go to medical school. So it kind of depends on where that takes me. Ideally, I would love to graduate, take a gap year and do some healthcare work in some rural communities in Canada and get some experience and make sure that's the field that I want to be a part of. And then take MCAT and MCAT scores will be very dependent on how far I can go and what my options are. But I think having traveled so far for my undergrad, I would love to do that a second time. I don't know if that'll be the United States or overseas, but I would like to take the opportunity to travel more with my degree if that's possible. So that's what I'm thinking.
Mark Surchin:
Well, thank you for that. I know everyone found that very interesting. And if we have any of our medical community alumni on the call, maybe we can link you to one or more of them if you're interested in that. So with that, thank you for that, Brittany. I will turn it back to Ora.
Ora Wexler:
Thanks Mark. I'm very pleased to now turn the presentation over to our moderator, Myra Novogrodsky, who as I mentioned earlier, was part of the Brandeis Class of 1968, majoring in history. Myra, as Mark had mentioned is really an integral part of our Canadian alumni community. She together with her husband, Charlie, who I see is in attendance at today's events who she met at Brandeis, were the former co-presidents of the Brandeis Alumni Club of Toronto. Both Myra and Charlie are mentors to both Ana and myself. Mark mentioned the Brandeis scholarship where Myra played a crucial role in founding and serving as an initial donor with respect to that scholarship. And by way of very brief background not surprisingly, Myra has a background in education. She worked for 27 years for the Toronto school board as a teacher and curriculum coordinator and served for 10 years at the faculty of education at York University. So she brings a really interesting public school perspective to the presentation. With that, over to you, Myra.
Myra Novogrodsky:
Hi everybody. This is actually a very thrilling moment to be with Brandeis alumni and friends all throughout Canada and also a few in the US. So I want to just tell you a little bit about how I initially encountered Anand Mahadevan. It was a really, truly chance encounter. My husband, Charlie and I, he also was at Brandeis grad and I want to say that we even got married in the Brandeis Chapel. So our Brandeis credentials are sterling. We're invited to a dinner, a very tiny dinner at the home of one friend. And she said to me, she was a science teacher and she said to me, there's someone I really want you to meet.
Myra Novogrodsky:
I think you have a lot in common and her guest was Anand Mahadevan. And we chatted a lot. I think the initial reason she invited us to get together was that we had some creative ideas about education and teaching outside of the box. And also he had written a book that had been recently published called The Strike. It's a novel about a 12-year-old in India who encounters a railway strike on a voyage. So I'm going to tell you about the book at this point. And we did get into a terrific discussion about writing for adults and for younger people. And I asked Anand, "Where did you learn how to think out of the box?" And he said, "Well I had the privilege of attending this extraordinary university outside of Boston."
Myra Novogrodsky:
And then Charlie and I, both of our eyes started to open wide. And we said, "Oh, and what might that have been?" And he said, "Brandeis University." So in this tiny little room in the East End of Toronto, there were three out of four people who were Brandeis graduates. And from that moment on, I determined that I was going to bring Anand into our orbit and here he is, and he's never getting out ever again, even though he's moved to Calgary. So let me tell you a little bit about this amazing Renaissance man who's going to be speaking to you today. He was born in India, came to Canada when he was 17. Seems like he liked New England because for his undergraduate degree, he went to Bowdoin college in Maine where, listen to his double major, biology and German. See what I mean about a Renaissance man? He graduated Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa and from there in 2002, he got a master's degree. He went to Brandeis and in 2002, got a master of science in neuroscience.
Myra Novogrodsky:
And he was a teaching assistant to a very well known Brandeis professors who many of you might know Dr. Eve Marder and Dr. Jeff Hall. From then, I was not satisfied with that. So he became a Fulbright scholar and went to study creative writing and received a master of fine arts from Boston University. So he has had two tiers in his own thinking and education. He received an award and I have to say if anybody knows the world of education in Canada, this is equivalent to getting the Giller. He received the prime minister's award for remarkable achievements in education. If you go look him up online, you'll see an incredible picture of him being congratulated by our prime minister, Trudeau.
Myra Novogrodsky:
And incidentally, Anand you might be able to give prime minister Trudeau some advice because when he was interviewed this weekend, he said he didn't know whether he could or should send his children to school this fall. So maybe you could have a little chat with him. He's currently working on a doctorate in educational leadership. He was the head of academics at the University of Toronto school. He's taught creative writing at University of Toronto. He was the director of Bright Lights, summer lab neuroscience camp. And now he's a senior school principal in Strathcona-Tweedsmuir School in Calgary. So he is a man we really want to hear from, and I'm sure you'll join me in welcoming Anand.
Anand Mahadevan:
Thank you so much, Myra. I would rather, I seem to think of myself more as a person who just couldn't make up his mind. And so just kept doing things along the way. And so, yeah, but I think education has always been important to me. And I think to me, the way I sort of combine the idea of creative writing and science is that I really do believe that everything that we do is a creative pursuit. And so I'm going to begin this webinar and please feel free to put your questions in the Q&A section. I'm happy to integrate them as part of the conversations. If I say something that sparks a question, please do feel free. Also if I give reference just to anything and you want me to send you the links, I'm happy to send you out to the chat as well.
Anand Mahadevan:
So I'm hoping for this to be more of a free-flowing conversation. And Myra can also ask questions to sort of clarify. I'm going to begin actually by telling a story, because I really do believe in the power of stories. And the story that I'm going to tell you is a story that most of you are probably already familiar with. And that's a story from Hans Christian Andersen, The Emperor Has No Clothes. And if you remember that story there are two swindlers who come into a town and the king of that town is very vain and foolish and likes to spend all his money on clothes. And so they sort of tell him that they're going to put on the finest new clothes. There are different versions of the story.
Anand Mahadevan:
In Hans Christian Anderson's version it's that if you're a fool, you can't actually see the cloth. And so everyone sort of goes to this empty loom where they're weaving this fine cloth and pretends to see it because of course they don't want to be foolish. And then you end up with a king parading around naked through the city and everyone's marveling at his fine clothes. And it takes a little boy to point his finger and say, "The emperor has no clothes." And that's when the whole facade falls down. And so I kind of want to do... I mean, we've spent a lot of time in COVID. It's brought a lot of misery to a lot of people. It's trapped us in our homes for a while. It's brought pain and suffering to families who have lost their loved ones.
Anand Mahadevan:
But today I want you to also look at COVID as that little boy. As a little boy, who's a truth teller because one of the interesting things that I've noticed as a principal in this school is that we've struggled in so many years across so many years, they should have integrated technology to personalize learning, to really use learning as a tool that meets students where they are, and then supports them to where they need to be. And we've really struggled with that because teachers are like, "Oh no, no, no, that doesn't work. This is how I learned best back in 1960 or back in 1970 or back in 1980. And I've been doing this for 15, 20 years, and this is the best way forward." And so education is actually incredibly conservative in terms of the replication of the way in which knowledge happens often.
Anand Mahadevan:
And it's been hard to make changes and COVID comes and overnight we're able to shift. And yes, the shift is hard. Change is difficult and we struggle through it. But within days we had students who are learning at home. Within days, we had teachers who are connecting with students just the same way as we're connecting, would actually collapse that wall between school and community, because teachers could peer into their children's homes. Children could peer into their teachers' homes. I had teachers who are teaching with a little baby in their arm or getting to know the names of their children's pets, getting to know the names of their children's siblings. And so we had a whole new way of teaching and learning. Some of us struggled with it because A, we had socialized our students to learn in a certain way. And that shift of learning was difficult.
Anand Mahadevan:
Some of us also struggled because we like being around people. There's a huge human element to relationships. And I would argue that education is built on relationships. And so this shift in relationships to online was difficult. Some of our teachers struggled because they got to Zoom exhaustion. It's more challenging to be online and see yourself because that's the other thing we don't actually do often is when we're talking, we see our kids' faces. We don't see our own face staring back at us. And so that's also hard, but we also had people who thrived. One of my favorite stories of COVID is in fact, a teacher who is in his 34th year of teaching, who came to me in the first week and said, "Anand, I can't do this. I'm best in front of a classroom. I'm best talking to my students. I can't do this COVID thing. This technology thing is going to kill me. I really can't be a teacher like this."
Anand Mahadevan:
And I said, "Mark, you're a great teacher. It doesn't really matter what the technology is. You've got the relationship with the students, you're going to make it work." And he transformed students' lives online because not only did he figure out how to be on Zoom, but it's his best teaching came out because he actually figured out that he couldn't do the diploma exams. So for those of you who are not in Alberta, in grade 12 all of our students have to write a provincial exam to graduate. And so those were canceled this year, just as IB exams were canceled across the world. And so our students suddenly did not have the pressure of these exams, these sorts of gatekeepers at the end of their schooling and our teachers became free.
Anand Mahadevan:
And so Mark actually did this interesting and really revealing piece of education where because Black Lives Matter protests were happening in the US and even in Calgary, he actually asked his students in his social studies class to write protest songs. He said, "What do you want to do? What do you want to talk about?" And they said, "We want to talk about Black Lives Matter." He said, "Okay, well, the education piece that I'm supposed to work with you is about '60s and the protest movement in the '60s. But let me actually take some songs from the '60s and give you the opportunity to actually create what you want to do is what matters now." So he was teaching history in the present and that co-creation is something he had never thought about doing, because he was freed. So COVID freed him to do a new way of teaching and learning.
Anand Mahadevan:
So these stories that I'm trying to tell you are really about the notion that education has pivoted. And this pivot is actually an extraordinary accomplishment because even a year ago, our classrooms looked very similar to Victorian classrooms. Our school calendars looked very similar to agrarian calendars, even though most of us now live in cities. We get summer breaks because children were needed to help out on the farm. So many of these sort of 19th century relics, which have continued to persist and fuel our education system, have to take a shift. And so there is in fact, an incredible potential to change education. And I think of it, I use the German word [German], which is sort of a point of no return. It's the time in a novel or in a poem where something is revealed and your character cannot go back.
Anand Mahadevan:
Now they've changed. They cannot unchange. The key cannot unsee what they've seen. And that's the truth about education because parents have now seen what their teachers are doing. They're not hearing second hand, they're actually part of that education classroom, because education is coming to their homes. Schooling is coming to their homes. They're also seeing that it is in fact possible for children to learn in relation to other children without necessarily having to share that same physical space. I still believe that there's value in the physical space, but there's also value in allowing students to learn on their own pace and to explore their own areas of interest in ways in which schools perhaps have not been so willing. Like where schools have been like, "No, we're going to teach you this first, then this, then that." And perhaps for some children, we don't necessarily need that sequential way of walking through a curriculum and that children can in fact grow through taking pathways that are much more sequiturs for them.
Anand Mahadevan:
So that's one of the big pieces that we learned was that we could pivot and we could pivot fast, which was news to us. And so we did that, but one of the great learnings of COVID has also been over the period of time, is that it's not a sprint. It's going to be a marathon. And that marathon is shifting the way in which our educators are really looking at schooling. So this is going to be a long-term disruption to our schooling. So what are we going to do? And it's really interesting because some schools are being pushed a lot more than others, and I'll give you examples of that. So for example, in the United States where the cases are much higher, much worse in terms of intensity and frequency, schools are having to stay online. So we're going to continue to see a whole bunch of online learning.
Anand Mahadevan:
I've had students of mine who have chosen to stay at home in Canada, then go South to American universities that they've gotten acceptances to because they just don't feel safe. And so they're choosing to continue their online experience. So that's something new because for all of us Brandeisians, and those of us who went to American schools or Canadian schools, I would argue that one of the most formative memories, one of the most pivotal pieces of growth for us was our first year.
Anand Mahadevan:
The orientation, the activities that we did, the friends that we made in that first year, are our friends for life. And so parents worry and students worry about the fact that is a Facebook or a Snapchat or an Instagram account, a substitution, or is it good enough in terms of building those relationships that last a lifetime? And so those are concerns that we share. And I don't know if anyone, if he has been following Scott Galloway? Scott Galloway is a futurist a former, now a professor of business and a great predictor of trends in technology, in education.
Anand Mahadevan:
And he actually put out an article in New York Magazine talking about the fact that the disruption that COVID is going to bring to universities in the United States and how many universities will, in fact, in his estimation probably move out of education, they'll die out. And that the universities that are well known will probably go from being highly selective, to being much more open and bringing in a lot more students. And so one of the arguments that he makes, and I think it's worth exploring and worth talking about is the idea that many elite universities use their admissions offices as sieves.
Anand Mahadevan:
So is education a sieve? Are we really trying to find the best apple, the best blueberry? Are we sieving our children to cream the crop in one way, or should education be a pump? Should it in fact be trying to raise the number of students to make education accessible to all? And so Scott Galloway's argument is that COVID is going to make universities shift from a CIV model to a pump model. And that the throughput will in fact be much higher so that in fact, more students will have access to better quality education because technology can be leveraged to make education more accessible. And it's interesting because Scott's ideas are sort of coming from a university setup. And we in Calgary, in our small school, that's been around for 100 years, are thinking the same thing, right?
Anand Mahadevan:
Because we are also an elite school in Calgary named after Lord Strathcona who helped build the Canadian Pacific railroad, the last general manager of the Canadian Pacific railroad put the golden spike in BC where the railroad met from East and West. We're named after Lord Tweedsmuir, Baron Tweedsmuir who was John Buchan the first governor general of Canada who set up the Governor General's Awards, so also The 39 Steps, by the way if you are interested. And so in an elite institution that sort of draws its name and its history from Canada, we've started to look at going online, not just for the present for the COVID future, but also for the post COVID future in terms of making ourselves more accessible. That's a shift, we're not about necessarily sieving our population in Alberta and sort of taking the best of the best, but really changing our mission, really thinking about shifting our goal to say, what is the purpose of an educational institution?
Anand Mahadevan:
Can we in fact reach more people? Can we in fact, shed our elite roots and become more of an institution that's working towards equity and inclusion rather than trying to discriminate and pull people apart? So those are the kinds of conversations that I can guarantee you a year ago would not be happening. And I think the other piece that I do want to mention is we should really also talk, and I think I'm going to encourage conversations about this is, is the confluence of COVID and Black Lives Matter, particularly in North America. And why did that happen? Because I would argue that when COVID lockdowns occurred and we went into our homes, we started really thinking about what matters. Everyone was Marie Kondoing their work, their play, their education. And by that, I mean, we were just sort of getting rid of stuff that we realized were really ephemera.
Anand Mahadevan:
We're sort of focusing on core, we're focusing on what actually matters because we were all tired. We were all low on Maslow's pyramid of needs. We're all sort of afraid for our safety and our psychological safety, our emotional safety. And so we started just sort winnow our brain and sort of say, okay, what really matters? And in that mode of thinking, when we started thinking about our own life, our own safety, our own health, we also had the time to actually connect with people that we hadn't reached out to. We were in fact more connected through technology than we have been, because we had the busy-ness of our lives. And so that combination of a desire to be more human plus the technological ability and time to connect with people, I think really helped fuel a mass consciousness around black lives matters.
Anand Mahadevan:
And I say that because the murder of black people has been happening for a long time. Desmond Cole and I shared a stage in Halifax when we were talking at the 150th anniversary of Canada's Confederation. And he was talking about Toronto police murdering black people back then, but he wasn't getting that traction that he's getting now. So what happened? What changed? Again, I would say that COVID helped us move from sort of this linear change in awareness around race and equity to an exponential growth in our own awareness and our willingness to engage with anti-black racism in Canada and beyond. And really start talking, having those conversations about the subtlety of racism in Canada compared to the overtness of racism in other places. And so that's something I think is also a gift that COVID has given us. It's given us the time to reestablish and focus our connection with each other, and really sort of think about what really matters.
Anand Mahadevan:
And I'm really proud of that work that we're doing as human beings, because I think it's key. So the other thing that I want to talk about is what does anti-black racism, what does equity work look like in education institutions moving forward? So let me talk to you about some of the work that we're doing at SES. Because I think I want to speak from where I'm coming. But I'm also going to talk to the bigger opportunity that's available to people outside. Because I think there is a second part to this, which is that there is a disconnect around, will COVID make the rich richer? And so Myra, please remind me to come back to that if I forget.
Anand Mahadevan:
Summer camps, we know we're in COVID, COVID is not going anywhere. And we have a tradition at my school of running a musical every year and the musical is a big deal. Kids line up, they try to get spots on the musical. Everyone wants to be the lead. And so they have auditions and then they get cut and there's drama. And there's parents calling because, "Well, my daughter's been doing voice lessons for years and how can you not let her have the main spot or the spotlight?" So we have a musical, but it's not going to run because COVID has banned the use of wind instruments and singing. And so my drama teacher calls me up in July and says, "Well, Anand I have a problem. Not only can I not run the musical, but I'm also worried because my entire musical casting is white. And we're a school which has a significant Nigerian Canadian population. We are a school that has a significant Ismaili population. So Muslims, South Asians and not a single non-white child is in the musical."
Anand Mahadevan:
And she goes, "I can't abide this. They didn't even sign up." And now it's interesting because we were doing all these sign ups online. And so we didn't necessarily have the ability to go and tap kids on the shoulder or sort of pull people aside and say, "Hey, you would really be great." And so some of the work that she did in terms of infusing equity was not available to her. And it's also the summer where people are reading Ibram Kendi's book on anti-racism or they're reading a White Fragility. And so she as a white educator is sitting there going, "I'm really troubled by this. What do we do?"
Anand Mahadevan:
Now, we could have said that, "Hey, look, it's, COVID, there's no musical, forget about it. We've got enough things on our plate." And we do, I mean, I've been working 12 to 14-hour days all summer long. There's been no break, but we chose not to. And we cannot do that. We cannot circle the wagons, focus inward and give in to fear that somehow our school is not going to be good enough and we just have to preserve the core and kind of everything else has to fall apart. So what I suggested to her was, "What do you want to do?" She says, "Well, I really to do something about equity. I want to actually let the kids have more control and more say on what their lives are like in the school. I also want them to answer the question, why did none of their nonwhite friends sign up for the musical?"
Anand Mahadevan:
And so we started talking, she says, "But, I don't really, as a teacher, I no longer wanted to be the one telling them what they should learn. I want them to teach me, I want them to have the power to actually teach each other." And so here's another conversation. The shift of power from teachers and adults in the building to students, because for too long, has education treated children as objects, not as subjects in their lives. And so here's a teacher. And if you remember my comment about Mark earlier, who in his Zoom gave his students the choice to do protest songs and completely transformed the way in which he saw learning. And he actually was crying on the phone with me saying, "I can't believe it took me so long to co-create activities with my students, to give them the power to actually run the classes because I'm learning more than I ever taught them."
Anand Mahadevan:
And so you've got two teachers who are shifting in my school, not necessarily because of anything we as leaders are doing, we're just creating the space for them to have these epiphanies around what teaching has been like and a reflection and also dwelling in possibility of what teaching can be like. So that's the shift that COVID has given us because it's pushed us away from that rut in which we found ourselves. It's easy, we get used to what we have been doing. But when you get something that pushes you out, you start to say, "Oh, there are other ways of being, there are the ways of learning. And so the wonderful thing that Katrina, my drama teacher's doing is she's actually connected with black indigenous artists of color who currently are unemployed.
Anand Mahadevan:
They're not getting money because we're not in theaters, we're not filling the seats that actually we're not buying the tickets that get them the income that they need to survive. And they're already underrepresented. If you keep in mind A, you were underrepresented on the stage before COVID, and now with COVID, the stage doesn't exist. So she has connected with about 16 different artists, Métis artists, disabled artists, artists of color, queer artists, trans artists and said to them, "Hey, look, I can actually give you money because I had this much money that I had budgeted, which was going to go to New York to pay for the royalty rights of that musical that I was going to run. But now instead, I'm going to take that money and I'm going to go and seek grants. And I'm going to find a way for you as an artist who currently works professionally and is not being heard to come into this school and work with our kids and talk about how did you get into art?"
Anand Mahadevan:
How does an immigrant, a person of color find a way to get into art? How do they actually use art to change the world, but also to talk about what kind of racism and discrimination they faced in that art world, which in Canada is where very white. And so we're working in collaboration with a professor at the University of Calgary and we're actually finding ways. And so musical is gone, but instead we have a festival which is going to be called Against the Norm. And it's really about giving children a voice to say, "Hey, what does it look like? What does it feel like to walk through the school in terms of me as a teenager?" Because every teenager is really in some ways against the norm. They don't really feel at home with themselves and that's part of our journey is also in education is finding ourselves.
Anand Mahadevan:
So we're very excited. We're very excited, it's more work. It'll be so much easier to just do math, science, history and English and let go of the extremities. And in fact, that was some of the advice we were getting from the ministry of education was, "Focus on the core and let all the other teachers go." And we're like, "No, that's not really how education works." So I think it's really important to fight the good fight. Or as John Lewis said get into good trouble and really create the space for good trouble to dwell in possibility. And so the message that I'm giving my teachers and the message that I hope in all of your institutions that you're working is that yes, COVID is a game changer. If you read Arundhati Roy's article in the financial times, she talks about the pandemic as a portal.
Anand Mahadevan:
She imagines it as a door and that we have the opportunity to walk through it. And she really puts down this gauntlet of do we want to walk through it with all of the baggage, with all of our greed, with all of our desire for individual growth or personal enrichment, the trauma, the misery that we've brought until that point in 2020? Or do we in fact have a choice to leave that behind, walk through the portal again, no turning back and really form a new way of thinking, a new way of being. And I think as educators, we have this obligation to really allow our children to go through that portal. And so those are sort of some of the work that we're engaged in, it's hard work. Absolutely. And at the same time, the flip side of the coin is I do think that the rich are getting richer.
Anand Mahadevan:
And I think that that's something we'll have to talk about because the students who are coming from high socioeconomic status, so SES is the terminology we use in education. They've got the computers, they've got the high-speed internet access. They've got access to schools like mine, which is a private school and it charges tuition $25,000 a year. I mean, Myra and I spoke because Myra has a deep history in public education. And when I came out of the teacher's college in Toronto, there were no jobs to be had in public education. So I went into private education because that's where they would have me. And then in 10 years' time, I was locked out of it and that's why I told Myra I was like, "I can speak to the private education experience in Canada, but I really don't feel comfortable speaking about public education."
Anand Mahadevan:
But I do worry. I worry about my nephews and nieces who are in public education. And I worry about the fact that if a private school offers their children the full gamut of experiences, the richness of education from arts to Vis-Ed to science and a public school is only being told to offer English, science, math, and history. Then are my kids not going to be better placed when they get to university? And if they're better placed, have we not already done that work of privilege where we've moved them up and given them a headstart compared to the other students in our country and countries around the world? And that's going to happen, even if we go back to the notion of the kids in states are online, kids in Toronto where Myra is, are spending hybrid days. So they're spending some days in school and some days online, out here in Alberta, every child is going to school every single day.
Anand Mahadevan:
And that really is dependent on our numbers. And so suddenly we're going to start to see differences. So more than 95% of my students are coming back to in-person school. And we're still choosing to run a hybrid model because we've got about that three to 5% of students who won't be coming back. And we want to make sure that they're serviced, but we're also ready now. We know that there might be a second wave or a third wave, and we might be asked at the drop of a hat to go to online learning. And so we're just building from the start, the ability to go online at the drop of a hat. And so that's something else that's changed because now we're personalizing our education. So we're able to actually offer education to a student who is in the classroom all the time, to a student who's in the classroom, some of the time to student who's in the classroom, none of the time.
Anand Mahadevan:
And that's another change because if you didn't show up, you didn't really get much, but now we're saying it doesn't matter. We'll meet you where you were at. And I think that Myra probably was talking about that at university when she was teaching. I think that was sort of the goal of education. And we kind of always were talking about it, but we were never able to get there. And I think COVID has sort of forced us to get there. So I think that that's a big difference. And I think for all of the misery that COVID is causing in the world, I think it also is creating this huge opportunity for us to really say, "Hey, you've been very comfortable. You thought that you had everything and you could sort of keep nature at bay and it wouldn't have to come and effect you. Well, here's nature throwing the door open, bringing all of its might into our homes and our lives and sort of saying, "Nope, you are wrong."
Anand Mahadevan:
And I think that those of us who grew up in parts of the world where public health was not as strong, we're always aware. Because I still, I mean, I'm probably one of the last people or the last group of people in the world who have a polio vaccine. And most people my age don't have polio vaccines in the West because polio had been eradicated by then. A smallpox vaccine, I still have the smallpox jab. Because again, it had been eradicated in the West, but we hadn't been, so there are in fact people who remember and see the opportunities and the disruptions that happen and how they actually create opportunities for new ways of learning.
Anand Mahadevan:
So I do think that we have this option of changing education through COVID, I've kind of given you a few examples. But I also have talked for a long time. So maybe what I'll do is I'll stop, take some questions. And then if there are other things that come up, I'm happy to speak to them. I really appreciate the fact that you've taken time out of your Sunday to be with us here. And thank you for listening and Myra I'll turn it over to you if you have any questions for me.
Myra Novogrodsky:
Great. So I'd like to invite our participants to write in some questions, but as you're thinking about what Anand has said, I want to just kick off with one or two questions. And Anand, I envy you having one school to work in and having a school where every single student, because we've talked about this even if they're not from an economically privileged family, has access to the technology they know that they need to do this new learning. But I'm living in Toronto and when the pandemic broke out, the Toronto school board did a very quick survey and identified 60,000 students who didn't have a computer in their home and many more who didn't have a Wi-Fi connection. And they did some quick work to try to collect computers from the 560 schools and fan them out to some of the families that needed them the most.
Myra Novogrodsky:
Many families didn't even have an email address that it was almost impossible to connect with them. So although I appreciate hearing about the silver lining and I agree with you that it has been hard to move schools, doing things differently and seeing things differently. What's going to have to happen so that this crisis doesn't make the gap bigger?
Anand Mahadevan:
Yup. Agree. Absolutely, Myra. I don't know if you remember there was a time this would have been probably sometime between 1996 and 2000 that Toronto Hydro came up with this notion that they were going to put wireless router on every other pole and provide Wi-Fi internet service to the whole city of Toronto. And that was the time when we thought that was one of the earliest sort of articulation of the internet as a public service, a public good. And immediately the big three telecom companies took Toronto Hydro to court, shut it down because they felt that, and they argued successfully in court that Toronto Hydro had an advantage over them in terms of the infrastructure. I think we need to go back and revisit. We need to revisit that kind of mentality that sort of locked away internet access and prices.
Anand Mahadevan:
We pay so much more than other countries. We make it so inaccessible. And in fact, I think for all the wonderful things that the Trudeau government has done in terms of providing support. I think one of the places where I've seen a gap is really making that technological access because with so many children online, you've got two problems. You've got the problem with the hardware itself, which is, can I afford to buy the Chromebook, et cetera? That's relatively easily solvable, that's solvable because you can always get somebody to pay the money to buy the Chromebook, or you can donate the Chromebooks or the iPads. That's not that hard. I mean, yes, it's a money problem, but money problems can be solved, but it's the infrastructure. It doesn't help me if I have a Chromebook, but I don't have a Wi-Fi router.
Anand Mahadevan:
Or if I'm on this low bandwidth line and the rich kid next door is seeing the video in all of its glory and is able to annotate in real time. And I'm seeing spotty connections and I can't hear, or I can't see what the other kid is learning and that you've set up a systemic inequity. So I think we do, we absolutely do need to look at internet and technology and access as a public service. And that has to change. I have not heard it yet from any government org that is doing that, like as a response to COVID. And I think that that's a huge gap and that's a huge place where advocacy can occur.
Myra Novogrodsky:
I would agree with that. I want also take you up on one other thing that you talked about. Again, it's probably because of the relationship between the parents and your school and their students and that what you were talking about was that this is given parents to an opportunity to see their kids education and that that's very advantageous. And however we do know that every family is not a happy family. I'm working with another organization in Mexico which is desperately working with the tremendous rise in child abuse and woman abuse because people are locked in and there are huge numbers of mental health issues. And for these children, the school was a sanctuary. For most of them it was a place they got a nutritious meal as well. So for them not to have a place to go is a disaster, it's not an opportunity.
Anand Mahadevan:
Agree. Absolutely. And in fact, I would say that there were students of mine who also had a disaster and there's one student that I would call every single week and spend an hour with. Because this was a child who had a clinical depression and being stuck in a basement for six weeks with no friends and nobody to talk to and nobody really to interact with except through technology, which is very easy to say that, "Oh, I don't feel that I want to interact with someone." So, yeah, absolutely. I think there are real challenges and I think I don't want to be flippant about it. I spent more of my time talking about the opportunities and COVID, because I choose to look at hope rather than the fear because it's very easy to give into the fear.
Anand Mahadevan:
Sundays usually are my days that I give into fear. So thank you for organizing this on a Sunday. There are definitely afternoons when I give into dread because it's like, can we even do this? And is this a way forward or is this just us socializing inequity again in a new way? And so there's definitely a doubt. And I don't think you can ever really escape the doubt when you're doing work. And you sort of hope for your best and you're constantly putting your best foot forward. And you're constantly reflecting to make sure that when you put that foot forward, you're not putting it on someone and it's really hard work.
Anand Mahadevan:
So yes, I think COVID's brought back humanity in all of its flaws and all of its brilliance to the fore. And I would come back to Maslow's hierarchy. I think that when you have children who are not getting fed, I think Bert Brecht said it, [German]. First, you must eat, then you can talk about morality and religion. And so, yeah, I don't think you can educate on an empty stomach. And certainly there's a lot of peoples who've lost their jobs. And so my great worry of for this generation of children is that some children will give up on learning and education in terms of formal schooling.
Anand Mahadevan:
Certainly I had many of my children emailing me and calling me and saying, "Well, all of my Calgary board of education friends are out there filling grocery bags because they're now considered essential workers and they're getting extra pay for it. Why are you still making me work in school?" And that's a critical question for a child because it's the one marshmallow now, two marshmallow later problem. And so convincing children and keeping them in school, was a privileged I had, but many principals of mine, colleagues of mine and the public system didn't have that.
Myra Novogrodsky:
And I think there's a great fear that for the already disengaged students who lost six months and who are entering a very uncertain future now, and maybe suffering from fear of homelessness and their families, evictions are going to be starting up, it's going to be getting colder. For them going back to school becomes less of a possibility. And we have worked for so many years to get that dropout rate down. So the opposite of the opportunity and I do thank you so much for enunciating some of the opportunities that are definitely there, but it has to be seen in an equitable perspective. Is it an opportunity for everybody or only people who are in a privileged situation? So I think Ora is going to go on from here with some of the questions.
Anand Mahadevan:
Absolutely. Myra if I can just say to that though, I think that the gauntlet that I would lay down is that every educational system has to think about how they create opportunities for the present, with those challenges as mine. So that we took our local context challenges, and then we changed ourselves to meet that local context. And I would say that, and I do believe, I do believe that every educational leader in this country is focused on trying to meet their local challenges and local context needs. They will need help in certain cases like we talked about with infrastructure. But at the same time, I think you are absolutely right. And in some ways, designing our educational systems to adapt to the child, rather than asking the child who's been left behind or who has to work to come into our system, that's not the answer. So it's the education system that really has to change. And honestly it shown that we can change. So now the question is how do we make that happen in a sustained way? Ora.
Ora Wexler:
Sure. I'm going to go through the questions in the order that they came in. And so we've got a question from Mark Rothstein, who I believe is in Quebec. His question is, "Can you please elaborate on the statement? Learning is not a sprint, but a marathon."
Anand Mahadevan:
Yeah, it's a great question, Mark. When we first started, I still remember in March when I had teachers come to me saying, "So you're saying this whole online thing is going to be for two weeks and then we'll be back to normal. Right?" And I was like, "No, I don't think you get it. I don't think there is any normal after this." And it was very hard for people to understand that piece. And so I don't think I meant learning as a sprint, but not a marathon. I meant that this notion of the impact of COVID is going to be a marathon and not a sprint. And I do believe even after a vaccine is found, even after or perhaps COVID becomes like our flu season or like our cold, I think the way in which we approach both infectious diseases in school in terms of public health, that's transformed.
Anand Mahadevan:
So I don't think we're going to go back to that sense of, "Oh, it's flu season, we're going to have a lot more absences and that's normal and the kids will just have to do work at home and catch up." I think we will be expected by families to say, "Well, if you did that for COVID, why can't you do that for the regular influenza season?" And so I think that, that's what I mean, is that the way in which we respond to public health challenges has fundamentally shifted, but it also now presents opportunities to say, well if my child is a skier or my child is participating in whether let's say a trip to Israel. I'm just talking blanking on the name of that trip that children go on.
Ora Wexler:
Birthright.
Anand Mahadevan:
Birthright. Thank you. So if my child is going on a birthright trip, then can the school continue to provide support? So is there a way for the school to actually accommodate and work around my religious differences, my cultural differences? Maybe I don't need to take Christmas off because I'm not a Christian, but I need to take Diwali off because I'm Hindu. Can the school now accommodate? So suddenly that's what I mean by the marathon piece is that schools really have to start thinking about the fact that we've shown we can do it, which means we will be asked to do it again and again.
Ora Wexler:
Thank you. The next question is from Dan Lyon in Toronto, "How can young kindergarten and elementary school kids be expected to sit for long periods without engaging with their peers? Is anyone considering education for parents so they can properly assist their kids?"
Anand Mahadevan:
That's a brilliant question, Dan. And I would say that it's the hardest thing in education right now is the K-6 sector. It's really a big struggle. And one of the things is around the fact that parents who are still working. And in fact, we have to keep in mind that schools serve an economical purpose that way, because it allows children to be away from parents and allows parents to then return to the workforce. That has also been laid out and revealed in all of its sort of glory and messiness. And so in Alberta, we are luckier than in Ontario in the sense that our students are coming back to school. But at the same time with physical distancing of two meters, with masking and all the challenges that come with it.
Anand Mahadevan:
And I don't know if you ever saw that the interview of the young man who was a kindergarten teacher in Montreal at the end of the first day when Quebec came back and the news announcer was like, "So what did you do today?" And he's like, "We spent the whole day learning how to wash our hands." And I don't think that's what he was hoping the answer was, but I think that's what it took. So you're obviously right. I think parents need to be part of the equation much more so than we have asked them to be in the past. And we've sort of outsourced education to schools. And now we're saying we're coming back to that partnership piece because parents need to be hand and glove with their teacher. Because the role of parents as educators in the informal space sector has now really revealed itself because parents were always educating children. They never were not.
Anand Mahadevan:
But we only privileged education as those who are professionally doing it in schools. But now teachers are saying, "You know what? I need you, I need you to help show this child how to read. And so I'm going to in fact, share the learning skills, the tips, the ways of learning and teaching that I use. And I'm going to make you a partner so that you can then teach the child." Which is something we were supposed to be doing all along. I mean, this is not supposed to be new. But again, it took a push. It took a shove to get us to where we were supposed to be. And so we are doing that, but it comes again with all of the caveats that Myra talked about. Because if my parent population are out there cleaning hospitals, working in civil markets and they are in the front line and they don't have the privilege of sitting at home and working on Zoom, who's partnering with that child? My parents don't speak English.
Myra Novogrodsky:
Can I just add that I believe the plan in Ontario, which changes every day is to have face to face learning. One of the issues is that even though there's been six months of school closures, there hasn't been enough work done in my opinion on hiring enough new people to create the class size that the epidemiologists are recommending to cut down on that transmission of COVID. And we're very cramped for space. We have a lot of very old buildings. So right now there's an investigation now five and a half months after this started about whether a library space can be used, community centers, et cetera. And Toronto on Friday, decided to hire another, an extra 336 teachers for this year, which is something, but it's not really as much as we need. But-
Anand Mahadevan:
And in fact, I mean, I believe that their plans were turned down by the province.
Myra Novogrodsky:
I think this has been now accepted that a majority of the new teachers, and there will be some redeployed teachers will go to areas which had the highest incidence of COVID and are in the lower socio-economic strata. So that piece is good if they can find adequate space. But the school is supposed to open in two and a half weeks and people haven't even been hired yet. So there's a lot of issues and furthermore, they have no idea how many kids actually will be coming back because some parents have children who have health issues or they live in households where people have severe health issues, they don't feel safe. So they don't have any idea of the number.
Anand Mahadevan:
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. We come back to school next week, in fact, so we have five working days to really get it done, but you're obviously right. And those are the conversations. So all through August, I've been on the phone with the families who have immunocompromised health and sort of working out plans with them. And it requires a colossal amount of work. And I don't mean to speak for myself here, but it is sometimes it does feel like superhuman effort because you're just exhausted every single day trying to... Again, it comes down to that personalization, right? Like what is it that you need Myra to be successful? Because I can't have one size fits all for everyone anymore. And I do believe that public school educators care as deeply about their children as private school educators do.
Anand Mahadevan:
I think if we just free them and unleash them to do their work, rather than hobbling them with all kinds of restrictions and policies, then I think we will. And that's where the relationship piece comes in. I think once we actually find that space and we put a teacher in where the classroom, it doesn't matter. We actually are going out into the woods. So we have six outdoor classrooms that we just built by moving things under event tents. And we took that lesson from the 1912 Spanish flu. And we chose to do that, but with the old ideas, if they can create that opportunity to build the relationship between the teacher and the student, then that will take care of it. As long as, and I think this is the caveat, the teacher has to be happy. Because the teacher has to feel psychologically safe, and equipped to go into that classroom and support students.
Anand Mahadevan:
And so I think I just want to make sure that Dan's question is answered is that I don't think we can ask kids to really sit in their one seat because they're not two meters away with their mask on for eight hours a day. I'm going to just come out and say it, that feels more like prison to me than an education system. And so one of the pieces of work that we're doing very much so is to free kids by giving them more space, for example, going outside or by actually spending the time to see what other jurisdictions have done. So if for those of you are familiar with the way Taiwan and Korea have dealt with the COVID pandemic is Taiwan actually had very, very few cases throughout this whole pandemic.
Anand Mahadevan:
And they actually had sort of plexiglass tri-folds that they used at their desks, which allowed kids to actually move their desks, go back into group work, do that collaboration, do the conversations and inquiry pieces that we value. And so as a school, we actually order plexiglass tri-folds they're made in Toronto actually, and they're being shipped out and that was, we chose to spend the money there because that allowed us to preserve what we care about, which is kids being able to move, kids being able to talk to each other, kids being able to learn from each other, because it can't be everyone... We can't, I'm sorry, but I'm not going back to that Victorian classroom of rows of seats, everyone facing forward and the sage on the stage talking.
Ora Wexler:
Thank you. We have a question from another educator who's at our event and the question is, "How do we involve internet companies and other organizations and third parties that can provide support for students and teachers so that teachers can really focus on their area of expertise, which is educating and not on equipping students with basic needs?"
Anand Mahadevan:
That's a great question. Maria, if I'm saying her name right. I do think that I would say Toronto actually has for the last three and a half years really been promoting itself as a tech city and drawing talent from Silicon Valley because of the current political leader in the United States. So we actually do have a wealth of talent, and a wealth of companies and a wealth in companies. And I think it's important for them to step up because I think capitalism is not going to solve the COVID crisis. It's going to be our research institutions, our educational institutions that are actually going to find the cure. But at the same time, I'm going to say that needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt because technological companies, whenever they have tried to make inroads into educational institutions have done so to on the backs of the data that they take from our children.
Anand Mahadevan:
And so for example a lot of school boards have gotten chosen to go with Google Apps for Education or GAFE which is now called G Suite because Google just offered it for free. But at the same time, Google is reading every single email that 13-year-olds are writing to their friends is analyzing the metadata and is actually gaining information about how to create their future consumers. So Apple is doing the same, Microsoft's doing the same. So I think we really have to go out there and say, "Okay, well yes, you can donate the money and you can donate the technology. But tell me about the strengths. What are you making me give up? And particularly you're not even asking me to give anything up. You're asking the kids who actually cannot make decisions. You're asking them to give up their privacy. You're asking them to give up their data rights."
Anand Mahadevan:
So I think that those are difficult conversations. But I think that it behooves us to have those conversations and you'd be surprised. You'd be surprised at the fact that if you ask the right questions or if you actually hold people's feet to the fire, they can come through and make changes. So is it hard? Absolutely. Is it necessary work. I believe so. I think the group of people who are on this call are privileged people, are people who can make that conversation happen, are people who know how the law works, what companies are wanting, like you are sitting behind the scenes in many of these places and you know what makes these companies tick?
Anand Mahadevan:
So I think there's an opportunity here for us to actually form a public interest group that actually goes out and says, "Okay, well does the Brandeis alumni chapter of Canada want to adopt a set of schools?" Whether it's in Regent Park, whether it's in Jane and Finch, whether it's something else entirely? Or do we in fact want to go in and say, okay, well all those certain families that we took in in the last three years, do they become the place where we say, okay, you're spending so much time and energy because I can speak to this. Because we came with $500 in our pocket. I can still remember that look the immigration officer gave me and my dad at Pearson International. He just felt so sorry for us, because he was like, "You're coming to Toronto with $500 in your pocket in 1996 and you hope to survive?"
Anand Mahadevan:
I just felt the waves of empathy and pity coming off of him on me as a 17-year-old. And the first few years for us were hard. My mother was a qualified teacher, was in fact unpicking old clothes on Spadina and one of the old factories while she waited for the ministry of education to recognize her certification before she became a teacher again. So if we find those communities, those communities that actually have the greatest needs, and they may actually not be the communities that are necessarily always being talked about, then we have the opportunity to go in and say, "Okay, well, what can I do? How can I help you be empowered?" And really, I would say that the trap for us is not to become rushing in as saviors, but it's to find the opportunity to say, well, how do I empower you? How do I teach you to fish rather than give you a fish every single day and build that dependency with me?
Ora Wexler:
Thank you for that. The next question is from Charlie Novogrodsky, and it relates to staff solidarity. He asked that when some teachers are pivoting faster, more effectively than others on staff and ask, "How do we maintain and build staff solidarity when some teachers are waiting and really hoping for us to return to the old normal?"
Anand Mahadevan:
Yeah, that's a great question, Charles. I would say that there definitely are people who are just hoping that if I put my head in the sand and wait for this to blow over, then I can just go back to doing what I was doing. Here's how I'm pitching it. And I'll let you know if I'm successful. I'm sort of building the staff community at my school by just using two pieces, one is we have to trust each other. And we really have to trust each other that we have the best interest of our kids at heart. That's our starting point. And the second point is we're going to spend a lot of time being vulnerable. So anyone who hasn't read about Brené Brown or heard about Brené Brown, I would encourage you to go and listen to her podcast or read her books.
Anand Mahadevan:
She's a shame and vulnerability researcher out of Texas. And so we're spending a lot of time actually talking about vulnerability. All right, I'm actually going to be sharing as a leader with my staff about the dreads and the panic attacks that I have on Sunday, thinking that I haven't done enough to set them up for success. But it's important for us to understand that every teacher who's coming into those classrooms is coming from a different place. Because some of our teachers have older parents that they are worried about. Some of them themselves are immunocompromised, some of them are worried about their kids. Some of them are actually incredibly happy to be back at school and back with their kids because they were lonely. They didn't have anyone that they were interacting and that school is their life. And so they are desperate, they're beating down the doors of the school to try to get in.
Anand Mahadevan:
So you've got this huge variety and I think this is the other piece. There is this bifurcation and we can come back and talk about that if you want, but trust, vulnerability. And then the third piece of my puzzle is purpose. And I think it's important that if we can build a community that has trust and vulnerability, then we can actually talk about shared purpose. And that vulnerability piece is about teachers who feel like, "I actually don't want this. I want to go back to feel empowered, to be able to say that." Make themselves vulnerable, but within a community that actually accepts them for who we are, because we can't be talking about accepting the whole child and accepting children for who they are, but not the adults in the building. Certainly their expectations of the adults in the building they have to do their work, they have to support the children.
Anand Mahadevan:
And I certainly think that the reason why we're doing this work is so that the teachers have the psychological safety because an unsafe teacher can actually harm entire classes of children because they will transmit their anxiety. They will transmit their fear, they'll transmit their dread. And especially when you're talking about younger kids, kids under the age of 12, they actually take their stress notes from the adult that's around them. So if the adult is calm, the kid is calm, if the adult is losing it, the kids will lose it. And so we do have a professional responsibility to do the right thing by our students, but that doesn't mean we're not human. And so I think creating spaces for our humanity to come forward and to be able to admit. I will happily admit that I would have loved to have had two months off and be able to rest after what was my first year.
Anand Mahadevan:
Because I mean, I was in Toronto last year and I came to this school and it's my first year and at about nine months off getting to know people and then we went into COVID. And it's been a remarkable journey and a remarkable gift of trust that the school, the parents, the community, the teachers have given me to lead them through a place where I'm telling them I don't even know how the end is. I don't know when the end is, I don't know what it looks like, but we're going to go on this together and I'm going to do my part. I'm going to look at all the research. I'm going to read it, but I'm also going to lean on you. And so we do need to lean on each other for that.
Ora Wexler:
Thank you very much Anand. And thank you Myra, for that very passionate and informative session. If anyone has any further questions for us, please don't hesitate to reach out. We will be providing you with all of our contact information and we really are looking forward to many more Canada wide Brandeis alumni events in the future. I'm now going to turn the session over to my co-president Ana for some concluding remarks.
Ana Lobo:
Thank you Ora. Thank you so much everyone for being here today. Anand thank you so much for your insights. I think I'll echo everyone's thoughts. This was a brilliant, really insightful talk. Thank you so much, Myra-
Anand Mahadevan:
Thank you for listening.
Ana Lobo:
Thank you. As well, Mark and Brittany, thank you for sharing your time as well. And more information about the Brandeis scholarship and Daniel for organizing as well. And we really look forward to meeting more of our Canadian alumni community at more of these events. And thank you for taking time from your Sunday as well to share this moment with us, that we're all trying to kind of stick together as a Brandeis family as well. So thank you again and with that... Oh yes, sorry. And look out for the video. It's going to be online as well. So if you want to take a look at that and if you want to reach out to Ora or myself with any other questions, then we'll also share Anand's info with your too. And Daniel has just posted the link there. So thank you again, enjoy the rest of your Sunday. And it's been great sharing this time with you. Thank you everyone. Bye.