This event took place on Wednesday 8 July 2020, and the recording is now available on this page.
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About the webinar
Teachers are experiencing some of the most dramatic change in their careers and are under pressure to find new ways to support and reach their students. 70 per cent of school children are not attending school in buildings due to closures and rapid moves to remote learning.
What is the impact of this change on teacher resilience and wellbeing?
How are teachers and schools responding in different contexts?
This is a panel event, with speakers from around the world, followed by questions from the audience.
About the panel
From the UK: Anna Lise Gordon, Professor and Director, Institute of Education, St Mary’s University. Anna Lise has extensively researched teacher wellbeing and resilience and will discuss the challenges teachers are likely to face at this time and some principles to help teachers manage their wellbeing.
Carl McCarthy is executive headteacher across three schools in the South East of England for GLF Schools multi-academy trust. He will talk about his experience as a school leader during this challenging time, focussing on how collaboration and creativity have been key to his resilience strategies whilst remote teaching.
Precious Adegunle is a teacher at Teach For Nigeria. Precious will share the context of lockdown and school closures in Nigeria. Precious has had to return to Lagos, far from where her students live, and has secured technology for them to be able to keep teaching and keep in touch with parents. Precious will cover the different aspects of her “new life” in Lagos and how these are supporting her wellbeing and resilience.
Ali Raza Jafri is a fellow at Teach for Pakistan. Ali will talk about how schools in Pakistan were affected by the lock down and school closures. He will share the different approaches he has taken through self-reflection, interaction with students, parents and other teachers to support his own well-being and resilience during this challenging time.
From Brazil: Natacha Costa, Executive Director, Cidade Escola Aprendiz, a civil society organisation with a 22 year history of making improvements for communities though education. Natacha will share the context of lockdown and school closures in Brazil and her observations of the different ways teachers and aspects of their professional practice are having a positive impact on their wellbeing.
References
The following resilience and wellbeing references were mentioned in this webinar:
Chandler, D. (2017) Resilience – The governance of complexity, London: Routledge
Gordon, A.L. (2020) Creative approaches to nurturing resilience of trainee teachers, Impact Journal of The Chartered College of Teaching, Issue 9
Gu, Q. & Day, C. (2013) Challenges to teacher resilience: conditions count, British Educational Research Journal, Vol. 39(1)
Neenan, M. (2009) Developing Resilience – a cognitive behavioural approach, Hove: Routledge
Robertson, I. (no date) What is resilience?
Webb, R. & Kirby, P. (2020) Covid-19 and schooling for uncertainty, British Educational Research Association blog post.