“Mummy is meeting a teacher,play on the iPad”: Reflecting on educational leadership during COVID-19 lockdown in Australia

We, as educators in Australia, felt impacted by COVID-19 but it was tougher in Melbourne than anywhere else in Australia because of the 112-day COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. Melburnian educators felt disconnected from the rest of the country as most Australians lived with minimal restrictions, whilst the second largest city in the nation had its childcare centres, schools and universities forced shut. Students and teachers at every level of education moved online and stayed that way for months. Current research literature is suggesting a connection between COVID-19 restrictions on social interaction and negative mental wellbeing (Morris et al., 2020; Pfefferbaum and North, 2020; Vigo et al., 2020). This is concerning because Melbourne experienced one of the longest, most stringent lockdown laws globally and the impact of harsh restrictions on school communities are beginning to emerge. The Commonwealth Fund Survey conducted across ten countries between March and May 2020, found mental wellbeing concerns aligned with times of strict lockdowns and restrictions (OECD, 2021b). Adolescents also reported suffering with depression or anxiety due to the ramifications of school closures and loss of social interaction (OECD, 2021a). These findings shadow the impacts being uncovered in less developed countries, whereby lockdowns are exacerbating already existing problems of poverty with women and the younger generation greatly impacted (Bruckner and Mollerus, 2021).

Using a critical reflection practice (CRP) approach (Cunningham, 2012) this reflective piece focuses on Harvankova's experiences as a leader of an educational institute during the 2020 Melbourne lockdown. The four-stage approach of critical reflective practice involves gathering data, making assumptions that were implicit and clear, confronting the issues and problem we seek to address to then lead to offering recommendations about how problematic research access might be reconstructed to benefit both the researchers and those researched (Cunningham, 2012). In adopting this approach, the paper adds to the body of work that employed different forms of critical reflection to explore their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic (Farrell and Stanclik, 2021; Grech, 2021; Kim, 2020). We now turn to examine her experiences through sharing passages from Harvankova's reflective journal. The passages are compared with Cunnigham and Striepe's experiences in Western Australia and current literature related to our experiences.

On March 11^th, 2020, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic and a mass shutdown began worldwide, with education shifting online (Jandric, 2020). Almost overnight 191 countries closed schools and over 1.5 billion students began online education (Drane et al., 2020; Jandric, 2020). We all felt the impact as educators and parents of school children.

Given my role as Senior Academic Manager of a Melbourne ELICOS (English Language Intensive Courses for Overseas Students) institute, and a mother of two young children, the impact was immediate. In March 2020, when international borders closed the student population plummeted from over 1000 students to just 130 students by the end of 2020. I hadn’t realised the enormity of what the lockdowns would mean for my work.

I remember the days leading up to my school transitioning to e-learning being filled with stress and uncertainty. Most teaching staff had never taught online, and we scrambled to quickly decipher platforms such as Teams and Zoom. That first week of online instruction was terrifying. We all did our best, worked ridiculously long hours but we figured it out, together. On top of this, the unexpected crisis meant that parents became substitute teachers. I became responsible for homeschooling my two children, all while grappling with the difficulties of conducting business from my home.

While Western Australia began to return to a new-accepted way of life in July 2020, the state of Victoria, specifically metropolitan Melbourne did not. By 6^th August 2020, metropolitan Melbourne was under stage 4 restrictions. This meant staying at home with a curfew, 1-hour outdoor exercise limit, maximum 5km travel restriction, mandatory mask-wearing and prohibition of indoor or outdoor gatherings. These limitations lasted for 12 weeks. Schools closed for the entire term and as students started returning in October (Valencich, 2020) the feeling in the state was sombre.

It affected everything in my life. I was the lucky one, as my mother lived within my 5km radius, so we went for our 1 hour walk together. She was legally allowed to walk alongside me and my children, but we were not allowed to embrace. It was heart-wrenching not being able to cuddle my sixty-year-old mum and to have to explain to my children that the new rules meant they could not touch their Nanny, but at least we could see her. Most Melburnians were unable to see their family for months. Had I not been living near my mother, I worry what would have become of us, I’m sure our physical and mental wellbeing would have spiraled downwards. Imagine being forbidden from seeing a loved one who was undergoing surgery because your postcode was too far away. This happened to one of my teachers and there are many comparable stories from the people of Melbourne.

Emerging literature on the effect of COVID-19 and its correlation to mental and physical wellbeing has been reported by the World Health Organisation, which issued concerns about those suffering prolonged lockdowns (Doyle, 2020). Pfefferbaum and North (2020) have explained that fear about the virus and subsequent health risks can trigger an increase anxiety and stress levels. Such claims are mirrored in Melbourne where the lockdown saw a 31% increase in Melburnians accessing government provided mental health services (McCauley and Curtis, 2020). An eye-opening report published by Russel et al., (2020), uncovered that more than 50% of Victorian school children's mental wellbeing suffered in 2020 due to remote learning, nearly double that of the Australian average. We wonder how many more suffered in silence and how the wellbeing of the people in our community will be impacted by the state-wide lockdowns that caused businesses and schools to close and loss of income.

Empirical research thus far has not emerged describing the consequences of school closures and online learning on children, but some recent literature makes assumptions as to what these might be. For example, Joseph and Fahey (2020) assumed school closures would impact education negatively and Drane et al. (2020) assumed e-learning would be difficult for everyone. Furthermore, Drane et al. (2020) highlighted that all children run the risk of psychological problems due to school closures and lockdowns. We all had experiences where these assumptions were made true.

I could see my children suffered mental health challenges because of the long school closures. Our home began to feel like a bubbling volcano, with constant eruptions from both of them, including me. Whether it was about helping with e-learning, a Zoom technical issue or even just a silly argument, being in such close quarters all the time felt unnatural, and we struggled to maintain positivity every day. I reflect on my parenting in that time and feel ashamed of how much screen time my children had; an iPad became the solution and a way for me to work in peace. I couldn’t support them in the way that I wanted to, and technology became a quick fix. I’d be running a meeting with a group of 30 teachers, while sharing a workspace with my husband, who was also trying to participate in a meeting. We’d hear our two children start arguing over a game, make eye contact and non-verbally agree as to who would awkwardly leave the meeting and solve the fight by giving both children an iPad. This is not the way I like to parent and support my children, but it was the only way. I was unable to handle the struggles with my own school being online as well as support my children with theirs simultaneously.

As school leaders, we all watched as our teachers struggled with working double time to prepare for classes and we stood in awe as they overcame their fears and delivered classes in an unknown world. Yet, this only scratches the surface. Even before this global pandemic, we were aware of issues surrounding mental and physical wellbeing growing in the school system (Adams, 2020). Recently, Flack et al. (2020) surveyed educational staff in April 2020 and found that teacher's planning time and anxiety levels had increased but as the next passage shows we have wondered how to best support teachers during this ongoing crisis.

My teachers delivered online English classes for nearly 9 months straight. When children returned to face-to-face classes, adult education remained online. I met with each teacher virtually as often as possible. I became an ‘accidental counsellor’ and tried my best to be as flexible and understanding to their wellbeing. I’d read that the unexpected mass school closures and social restrictions of 2020 had made wellbeing a number one priority for educational leaders ( Gillard, 2020 ) but when I sought guidance from researchers, I could not find much relating to how my staff or I were feeling. We were anxious, we were afraid, we were dealing with something that was completely new to us all, all the while trying to support our families and students.

Australia's third biggest export is education, and hundreds of thousands of internationals enrol in programmes annually (Australian Government Department of Education and Training, 2018). In both of our contexts, international students were deeply affected by COVID-19 closures, and these are the students we support at our institutes.

Morris et al. (2020) found that international students, specifically New South Wales and Victoria experienced money stresses alongside academic worries during COVID-19,causing their mental health to decline significantly. Our experiences concur with these findings as our students struggled to keep up with e-learning using mobile phones and limited data plans. Given the length of the pandemic, it is likely that experiences of international students, whether they are in Perth or Melbourne, is now even more dire as they have been unable to work or study face-to-face for most of 2020. We know firsthand how difficult it was for the students and for the leaders who have been unable to fix their problems, like we are used to doing.

Unlike Australian citizens, international students were not eligible for ongoing financial aid. Many were unable to eat properly and relied on food banks. In Melbourne, we helped our students by arranging and distributing food packages containing non-perishable items. Yet, this was abruptly stopped as the heightened restrictions forbade the campus from opening so staff/students could not continue distributing packages. I felt responsible for these students. They were alone in a foreign country and not able to get any help from anyone, they turned to their teachers, and they turned to me. When the restrictions worsened in Melbourne, I couldn’t do anything to help them. It was a dark time as a leader of a Melbourne school, I was helpless.

There are few studies which have examined how leaders maintain their own wellbeing during a global crisis, but past research on emotional leadership (Crawford, 2007; Ginsberg and Gray Davies, 2003; Steward, 2014), is relevant to understanding how leaders support themselves and their teams in difficult times. A leader's ability to regulate the emotions of themselves and their teams, is crucial during a time of crisis (Crawford, 2007). A leader may have to carry the impact of difficult decisions affecting their teams, and that compassion can be emotionally taxing (Ginsberg and Gray Davies, 2003). But strong school leaders have embodied the culture and emotion of their schools, with relationship building and communication being pivotal to a successful school environment (Crawford, 2007). Understanding whether such emotional intelligence and strong social relationships within the school community helped leaders when making tough decisions and supporting struggling team members during the COVID-19 pandemic, would draw some interesting findings.

Over the next three years, the higher education industry is predicted to suffer a 10-billion-dollar loss (Birrell and Betts, 2020), which will inevitably lead to redundancies across the sector. Job losses have already occurred.

It's been a vicious year for me, that looks to carry on into 2021. There have been mass student withdrawals since the border closure in March 2020. As students graduate and new students are unable to enter Australia, I am faced with a constant cycle of staff layoffs. It has been heartbreaking. The Federal Budget announcement indicated that international borders would not open until late 2021 ( Coffey, 2020 ), generating an overwhelming sense of uncertainty. Subsequently, the mental wellbeing of our staff has declined as they face this reality.

As a leader in the ELICOS industry, I have been thrown into unchartered waters. I never expected international education to be an unsafe career path. Staff mental wellbeing is a priority in my school's strategic plan. I supported my team not only by listening and counselling, but also by trying to maintain team spirit and social connectivity. I created activity calendars that included online cooking, book clubs and trivia nights via Zoom. I did all this while, facing job and life uncertainty myself. The toll it is taking upon leaders is significant and research focusing on that perspective would be a welcome read.

We know that literature on the effects of COVID-19 on education is emerging but still scant (Burns, 2020; Dayal and Tiko, 2020; Jain, Lall and Singh, 2020; Maguire and McNamara, 2020). Data showing the mental health effects of prohibiting social interaction and closing cities is surfacing (Bäuerle et al., 2020; Bruckner and Mollerus, 2021; OCED, 2021a,b; Poudel and Subedi, 2020; Tan et al., 2020; Vigo et al., 2020). Of course, none yet show what the long-term consequences might be. While mental wellbeing was arguably only one consideration of many previously, COVID-19 has put wellbeing at the forefront of educational leadership. We note that previous research during times of natural disasters has shown how a leaders’ work centres on caring for others’ wellbeing (Striepe and Cunningham, 2021). However, our understandings of how leaders deal with the wellbeing of staff, students and parents during a health crisis is limited (Striepe and Cunningham, 2021). There are few studies which have examined how leaders maintain their own wellbeing during crisis, yet research on emotional leadership (Crawford, 2007; Ginsberg and Gray Davies, 2003) may prove insightful as experiences of educational leaders during this pandemic emerge. Further studies in this area are needed urgently, to help guide educators and enable school leaders to be better prepared and equipped to support their school communities in times of global crisis. Our critical reflective piece adds to the growing body of literature of on education during the COVID-19 pandemic and a research focus on Melbourne would be opportune and potentially significant.