COVID struck swiftly and powerfully. Like an impromptu night of heavy drinking in college, it turned our lives upside down, leaving us with morning after blur of images and reactions. For educators, the pandemic hit doubly hard as we struggled to fulfil our professional roles in an uncharted, fast-changing environment that literally flipped everything we knew upside down, all while struggling to meet the needs of our family – educating our own kids while educating others, keeping them safe and cared for, mostly without thought for ourselves. While teachers struggled mightily, administrators bore the brunt of it all, as they struggled to find ways to keep their schools operational in a no-physical-contact world, to get technology into the hands of those who had little or none, to motivate faculty to do what they had never done before, and to calm parents trying to figure out how to juggle their own work with home-educating their children. In short, it fell to administrators – principals and superintendents – to keep PK-12 education moving forward in the midst of a pandemic. Now, COVID has receded, but the “hangover” may be even worse than the event. How are superintendents, principals, and administrative trainees handling it? Is there a road to recovery? If so, what is it?

Speaker: Lou Lloyd-Zannini

Published in: London International Conference on Education (LICE-2021)

• Date of Conference: 22-24 November 2021
• DOI: 10.20533/LICE.2021.0007
• ISBN: 978-1-913572-42-6
• Conference Location: Virtual (London, UK)