Hope in the Darkest of Days: An exploration of the academic and wellbeing outcomes for educators, students and parents resulting from the COVID-19 Pandemic

Description

As the COVID-19 pandemic spread exponentially across the globe in the early months of 2020, school districts around the world expediently closed their physical doors to students and staff as governments built response plans. Unsurprisingly the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have been widely examined and commented upon. This has included educators feeling ill-prepared for online learning, teachers having very short notice to implement online learning, students suffering learning loss, negative impact on students’ eating habits, and deteriorating mental health in both students and educators. However, there are also areas where the pandemic (and the subsequent measures put in place) have produced positive or beneficial outcomes for teachers, students and carers. These include opportunities to extend the curriculum, opportunities to change the pedagogical paradigm, as well as children’s wellbeing given greater priority by parents and carers. This project analyzes literature more deeply through the annotated bibliography, and data collection options and opportunities are proposed for the three specific groups of students, educators and parents/guardians. The proposed exercises include examples of data collection possibilities, key questions for focus groups, and a questionnaire template. The project provides researchers with the opportunity to use this website-based resource to complete a whole school study focused on positive outcomes terminating form the COVID-19 pandemic in schools.

Student Biography

I became a teacher in the UK in 2004, spent six years working in elementary classrooms, before spending 8 years as an administrator in two elementary schools. I emigrated to Kelowna in 2018 with my Canadian wife and two young children, and embarked on my MEd at UBCO in January 2020. Since March 2020 I have been working as a vice-principal of a middle school here in the Okanagan.