Q&A with Principal Derricotte: Returning to in-person learning
Students returned to in-person classes on March 15 for the first time since March 2020, using a hybrid model that will shift to five days a week instruction with no cohorts following Spring Break. After two weeks of in-person instruction, Violet Calkin, Melanie Frick, Tory Ratajczak and Jackie Wright talked with Cedar Shoals Principal Antonio Derricotte about his experiences as the “pandemic principal,” in-person instruction and precautions, and Cedar’s future operations.
Web Editor Melanie Frick: What have been the biggest challenges of being a virtual school administrator and what have you learned from that experience?
Cedar Shoals High School Principal Antonio Derricotte: The biggest thing would be just trying to keep the morale of everyone up, whether it be students, teachers, family members, parents, stakeholders, community members. By this being so different, there is no framework to go by.
In the midst of everything else, education is still the focal point of what we’re trying to do. We still want school to go forward, but at the same time you have to realize we’re human. We hurt, we suffer, we go through it together. That’s why the social-emotional piece that we’ve talked about so many times throughout the school year is so valuable.
MF: Do you think that school spirit has gone up since being back in person and in the building this past month?
AD: For me, I think spirits have been lifted. I think there’s a lot of anxiety initially, of course people are worried about the cases per 100,000, just trying to make sure we won’t have an uptick. But more so than anything else, a lot of planning went into trying to bring everyone back into the building. We tried to phase and bring people back, so people knew that we weren’t just going to try to put everybody in the same place at the same time. That was strategic for a lot of different reasons, and we had to consider our 9th grade cohort. The freshman class right now had never even been on campus, in terms of classes or anything else. We didn’t want it to be overwhelming for them to be able to come back into the building, but at the same time, we still have some teachers that have never been on campus yet either. So we want to try to phase in to give everyone a chance to see the building, learn the building a little bit more.
Web Editor Tory Ratajczak: How is safe and effective social distancing enforced inside the school?
AD: We removed some furniture from within classrooms because desks weren’t able to be spaced out like we needed. Rather than bringing many students back at the same time, phase one was a great test for us to be able to see if we can bring in four or five students and safely distance them out. So based on what we’ve seen so far, we can add more students in, but one of the considerations we’ve had teachers really make (is) do you feel like the majority of your students will return face to face? And if so, do you feel like your classroom, the way it is now, can actually accommodate more students? So we’ve had a lot of valuable feedback in that regard. Some people have already said, ‘This won’t work based on the numbers I have.’
We’ve been looking at CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) recommendations. They’re saying that six feet is okay, but three feet can be the new normal moving forward. I’m still reading up on that, still talking to district personnel and Nurse Eve (Bisard), and seeing how everyone feels about that. Right now the guidance we’re using is six feet, and that’s been the best deterrent for us to try to keep everyone safe.
TR: Have there been any confirmed positive COVID-19 cases among Cedar staff or students since the March 15 reopening?
AD: There has not been any reported to me. So I’m willing to say no, because I am someone that should know if that has happened. But that has not been reported to me, so I feel confident that things are going well so far.
TR: What is the protocol if you learn a student has COVID-19 while they are at school?
AD: We would have to look at the location that the student was in. The student would have to be removed from that location. If we found out about any adverse reactions or if they had a fever or had a lot of coughing, precautionary measures would be in place to where they would meet with Nurse Eve. We also have a team of individuals that make up our response team. We have a location within the building where that person would be housed for the day, until someone can come pick them up. We will look at those measures as well as the classroom that they were taken from. If it was the first period of day, of course, we wouldn’t have to go through as many steps, but just based on the time of day that everything happened, we would have to go back through and look at the movements across the building for that student. It seems like it’s like a huge, egregious task, but Nurse Eve is phenomenal.
We have letters that go home when someone has been in close contact to say, ‘Please monitor, your child has gone through a process.’ These are all district approved letters. It is a very robust system.
Staff Writer Violet Calkin: How much preparation or training do substitute teachers get for Zoom or hybrid teaching?
AD: Kerry Hogan in the media center took all those individuals through a training program to explain to them how everything works in the classroom and what they were going to be doing in the classroom. We don’t necessarily call them substitutes because if the teacher of record is still Zooming in with the students that may be face to face, the teacher is still the teacher of record. We just have someone in the classroom to help monitor the progression of what’s happening with the face to face component. They did go through a training just to try to help acclimate them to Cedar and standard Cedar protocols and how we do things. That proved to be very rewarding in a lot of regards. The individuals that are helping us in that regard have said, ‘Wow, we felt like we were just going to be thrown into a classroom and forgotten about.’ They appreciate the follow up.
VC: Are there changes or new policies for the counseling department to work with kids through pandemic stressors or grief?
AD: They (the counselors) still are able to meet with students. We have a setup where they can meet with students in the conference area, rather than coming to the actual offices, making sure the social distancing can still take place. But even if we were still in the virtual sense, counselors are still available — just like they were before — to talk with students over Zoom and try to make sure they can provide support. The biggest thing right now is just trying to make sure that if someone does have concern, if they do feel like they’re going through a lot, that they don’t hesitate to reach out because there are individuals in place that are ready to help support as best they can. And that’s invaluable.
What I tell people all the time, (is) even though you’re teenagers and the old mantra used to be ‘Well they’re just a teenager,’ my thing is you have feelings and you matter. You have emotions and you care, you have people that you see or don’t see that you still want to talk to but sometimes you can’t. So that lets me know that you are a human being, and all human beings deserve to be supported in any fashion or manner that they can be. When you hurt, I hurt. I want to make sure that you have what you need to feel supported.
MF: Has overall attendance changed this year, and has it increased with coming back to in-person classes?
AD: I think many people were like, ‘Oh no, I’m not going back to school, I’ve gotten accustomed to not being there.’ For the few that did return those initial days, it’s like you can almost hear everybody reaching out to them and being like, ‘How was it? Tell me, how did it go?’ So we started fielding more emails from parents and students saying, ‘Hey I want to return to school too. I heard it wasn’t that bad.’ One thing that really concerns me is that students that were performing great face to face before, solid A and B students, found the Zoom world and virtual learning to be very difficult. Then students that did not seemingly do well in the face to face environment have found the virtual world of Zoom to be phenomenal. They feel like it’s their type of classroom. So it’s been a huge give and take process. While we want to be able to honor students and try to get you in the best realm that we deem necessary for you to be in, there’s no way we could have brought you back into the building any earlier than what we’re doing now.
MF: What will happen to the “vanishing students” who have not attended class since the pandemic started? What measures, if any, have you taken to try to re-engage these students?
AD: We have a student review team that meets every two weeks. Students are on that list and the way it works, teachers are asked, when they see a real spike in someone not attending class, to submit that student’s name to this Google form. That name is populated to our student review team, and then once the student review team meets, conversations are had like ‘Has anyone seen Antonio Derricotte?’ And people will say ‘Well, I haven’t seen him.’ Our school social worker, our counselors, our admin staff, we try to make calls, try to see what’s going on, or we actually make home visits, even in the midst of a pandemic, just to try to find out what’s going on. If you’re under 16, you have certain things that we are guided by the state, and we have to know what’s going on with you. So we try to do the best job we can.
TR: What will be different about graduation this year in terms of walking the stage and the ceremony?
AD: Graduation will take place on the football field. We’ve already had conversations as far as how that will look. The setup, we’ve gone through and they’ve given me several designs as far as how this possibly could look. Will the stage be facing the main stadium side? Will we have a stage in the middle of the field so both sides can be able to see the setup? Those are all the conversations we’re having right now. I want to make sure that it’s a Cedar ceremony, meaning I want to see lots of blue and orange, I want people to know that this is your school that you’re graduating from.
TR: Are you anticipating any effect on graduation rates this year and in coming years?
AD: In my own personal feelings I feel like we are behind. To really work with people and be very patient in understanding that, although we want to say that yes we’re back again, that everything is okay, we still have to give respect and give honor to the time that was lost: that was nobody’s fault. So with that being said, when I look at the graduation rate, I’ll still expect the graduation rate to actually increase, because now I feel like a lot of students are beginning to understand that we still have to take school seriously. We can’t just say, ‘Oops, my bad’ every year and forgive and forget about what happened. We still have to make sure that people are actually working and gaining Carnegie units, they’re working to compete against those students that may be face to face for scholarships. Although we can give a lot of forgiveness from a school or district level, that may not be the case when it comes to a neighboring county. I do expect the graduation rate to climb this year, and I still want it to continue to climb, moving forward, based on the fact that we are having a better grasp of learning from this pandemic, learning from operating in Zoom land and just ultimately operating from a virtual sense as well.
Copy Editor Jackie Wright: We know it’s impossible to predict the future, but what do you know so far, and what are your hopes for fall?
My hope is that we’ll be fully face to face next fall. That’s the plan that we’re working towards. One thing that I have to be completely honest about: we roughly had to flip to a virtual model in a matter of about three weeks. We had been planning for face to face for this past fall, and when the decision was made that we would not be face to face, it was like ‘Wow, we’ve been planning this long for face to face.’ So we have not really had those full fledged discussions, as far as how the fall will look. But it is my plan, and what we’ve already been working on, is to expect face to face learning.
I do expect that we’ll have some families and some students that are also going to remain in the virtual realm. That’s okay, we want people to be able to feel comfortable, no matter what environment they’re in. So if they want to remain virtual and that is an option, I do expect families to take us up on that offer as well, if that actually happens. So right now, I do expect face to face to be what we have with the consideration of having some virtual learning as well.
JW: What have you learned from this past year that will go into your planning for next year?
AD: One of the biggest things I’ve learned is: be excited, but be cautious. Plan for the best, but realize that there are reasons why you have some contingency plans as well. Have a plan, map out the plan, study the plan, but also have a backup plan just in case things don’t work out the way they should. Even looking at our return to face to face, if that’s the main plan that we’re looking at, we’re also going to look at contingency plans just in case something happens with a COVID-19 breakout within the building. What are going to be the next steps?
TR: Is there anything else you would like to say?
AD: Oftentimes, we do field emails, questions from parents, from students, wondering why a certain decision was made. What we have to do is do what’s in the best interest of the entire whole, not just for you. I try to look at situations, study through situations. How can we most effectively handle different things that come up? Even when you look at the school day, from 9:00 to 1:15, I was one of the people to say, “Hey this still may be very hard for parents if they’re trying to work, if they have to be at work early in the morning. This will be hard to try to adjust from.” Originally it was from nine to one, and the best we could was move it to from 9:00 to 1:15. We have planned out many different scenarios, try to address certain things, and so the biggest part we’re at right now is: be patient, use what is there for you to use and listen to what people are saying and really meet people where they’re at. Some people may criticize some things that we do, but we can learn from that to make sure that we’re going to ease or alleviate some concerns they have moving forward.
