Back in America

This is the first episode released during the COVID-19 pandemic. I hope that you are well and safe. Back in America continues, remotely. I will be conducting interviews in relation to our new life, but I also want to talk about more uplifting topics. As always, I welcome stories ideas, so do reach out on Facebook and Twitter. Also remember to look at the episode notes for a link to the books mentioned by the interviewees at the end of each episode.

Stay home and be safe. If you're tired of arguing with strangers on the internet, try talking with one of them in real life. Welcome to Back in America, the podcast. I'm Stan Bertolo and this is Back in America. Today I'm speaking via Skype with Princeton High School Principal Jessica Baxter. Jessica, as most school leaders across the globe, is faced with the challenging task of adjusting to the reality of the coronavirus pandemic.

When the school closed initially for two weeks on March 16, putting in place remote learning was only part of what had to be done. The staff at PHS had to ensure that every kid had access to a computer and the internet. Curriculums had to be adjusted for kids to learn online. Strategies had to be put in place to ensure the well-being of students. Jessica, when we prepared this interview, you told me that you were reassessing and replanning what you do not day to day, but minute to minute. Thank you for taking the time to speak with Back in America and to share your experience

keeping Princeton High School strong for the student and their family. So can we start by you introducing yourself, both personally and professionally? Sure. Thank you for having me. I actually began my career as a Spanish and ESL teacher in high school, so I taught there for about 12 years before becoming the assistant principal at Princeton High School in 2011. I've been at Princeton High School ever since, and this past July I was named principal. So this is my first year as principal, and it's been quite a year.

It's actually been pretty fabulous. I obviously wouldn't like a pandemic to happen to anybody, but I think we're dealing with it well and have a great staff and we have great kids. Personally, I live about an hour north of Princeton, in the nice little farm country of New Jersey. I have two daughters. They're ages five and eight, so not only am I going through remote learning as a principal, I'm also going through it as a parent who has become a kindergarten teacher overnight,

which is one of the biggest challenges here. So that's me. That must keep you very, very busy. So do you go to school during the day or do you work from home? Well, if I'm allowed in the building, which right now we're not supposed to be in the building, but when the custodians do their building checks once or twice a week, I try to stop by for a few hours. But mostly I'm home right now.

So since last Friday, I've been home, and this is the first time in my life I've ever worked from home. So when you're used to being in a school with 1,600 teenagers and you're always on the move and you're always walking around to sit at a desk on your computer all day, it's quite changing. Yeah. And I think this is the reality for most of us today. So take me back to the moment when you understood that the school was going to close.

Where were you? What were you doing at the time? What was your first reaction? And finally, what is the first thing you did? Well actually, about three days before we officially closed, I had a meeting with the superintendent where we were talking about the reality that we might have to close. So we started thinking, what does that look like? And we knew we would need to give the teachers time to plan.

So even before we knew we were closing, we had planned for, I think it was March 15th and 16th, to have half days. So to give the teachers time to plan. We also started to plan for how to get devices in the hands of all of our students who might not have computers or internet at home. It was one of those things I really didn't have time to process how I felt about it. It was just one of those situations where you just start making a list of things you think you need to get done because you were running short on time of having people in

the building. Did you sense a sense of panic at the time? I mean, this is like an unknown situation, right? We don't have a playbook for that. Well, I didn't sense panic, but I think that's one of my primary roles as principal is to model behaviors that I want to see. And I've always been of the mindset that panic isn't helpful. It doesn't help you.

It just rushes things. In order to think clearly, you have to just process your priorities. And in the moment, before we officially closed, and then even when we said we were closing because we still had school for a day or two then, it's very uncertain. Everybody's coming to you and they need to look at you and know that you're calm. And it actually calms them down because kids were coming up and they were very they were scared and they were frustrated and uncertain. And they need me as a principal to to become for them.

So, you know, I'm always honest with students and staff if they ask me questions because originally we closed for two weeks and everyone said, oh, are we coming back in two weeks then? And I said to them, that's the plan for now. But it could change. And that was an honest answer. But I've always thought that when kids and teachers ask you and parents, when they ask you a question, you calmly answer it. And you have to also reassure them that, yes, these are uncertain. I might not have all the answers to your questions, but I'll be there to support you and we're

going to get through this. So you said one of the first thing you did is to ensure that all the kids were having access to a computer. Did you have to invest? Did you spend any money procuring more computers? Not at first. We've had a program in place for about three years in Princeton. Any student who qualified for free and reduced lunch, basically if their families were economically disadvantaged, we would provide them with a school laptop.

It's a MacBook Pro and a hotspot so that they had Internet access as well at home. So we had been doing that over the past couple of years. So we thought we would be in a good situation. However, as soon as we said we were going to remote learning, a lot of those kids who already had devices said, well, you know, my device has been broken. I didn't tell you. So we thought we were ahead of the game, but we realized very quickly that even though kids had devices, they might not be working. And there were other kids who never put in the forms to see if they qualified for free

and reduced lunch, but they came to us and said, I have a need. So at that point, it wasn't about paperwork. It's just a family saying they have a need. We need to get them a device. So the technology department worked very hard to get devices ready. And my team at the high school just just worked to distribute those devices. Even after school closed, we were still there in the building so students can pick up their devices or exchange them or just troubleshoot logging on.

And where are we at the moment? At the moment, everyone who had asked for a device has one. I had just heard yesterday that we have two students who are I guess they were out of data on their hotspot. So unofficially, I'm going in Monday and I'll be at the high school to exchange hotspots for them. But there is a question with tech support. A lot of kids need help. So now we're actually seeing if we can get our people in technology, both English

speaking and Spanish speaking, to be able to reach out to the kids and say, well, we are speaking to be able to reach out to families to help them just troubleshoot some technology issues they're having or some access issues. Right. And how many computers is that altogether? We're probably talking at the high school about 9 percent of our students, so roughly 150 kids. OK, back to the first time, you know, when when you know that the school was going to close, how did the teachers react?

The teachers, I have to say they reacted in a way I was I was very I'm very proud of the reaction. They got to work. They said, OK, we have half days. I the first half day was a Thursday. I gathered them for about 10 minutes in the auditorium and I said to them, I said, we still have school tomorrow, but I'm not going to gather you in a large group again tomorrow.

We're talking about socially distancing ourselves. So I just want to give them one little parting message from me right now. I just want to give them one little parting message from me right in person. And I just said, listen, you know, we're we're going remote learning. We have a platform already. We've had power school learning, which could serve as an online classroom. We've had that for a few years now. Now is the time to really to see how far we can improve our practice in that area.

And I said, you know, you have you have planning time. I asked them to to to buddy up. Instead of creating as much content that they needed themselves, they could they could pair up and really divide and conquer. We also came up with a schedule where we have an EF schedule at the high school for our block days, where half of the classes meet on E days, half meet on F days. So the students and teachers are only responsible for half of their classes every other every other day.

So that was reducing some workload as well. And I said to them, we're not in person. You're not going to teach a class in this situation as you would in person. So obviously you have to your instructional strategies are going to change. We're really going to focus on skills here, not every single activity that you normally would have taught as part of your curriculum.

All right. So, well, I mean, obviously teaching is tough. And I imagine that remote learning must be super difficult, right? Talk to me about what's important to look at as a principal, as a teacher, when you do that. The situation we're in is a little bit different. Most schools, if you have an online course, whether it be through high school or college, people have planned that course beforehand. They've planned it in its entirety to be taught online. Our teachers taught three quarters of the year in person and were given two days

notice to put the rest of the year online. So so I really wanted everybody, teachers and families, to be a little understanding of that, that it's going to take some time to to get it right. Some of our teachers, they're excelling at it. Some a little too much, actually. Some are they're getting a little too good at this, right. But how can you be too good at that? What do you mean? Well, I think some people were just right away.

They were putting up videos of themselves teaching a course. Then they were meeting with kids. They were continuing their classes if they were still in school. And I think in the situation that we're in, that's not actually realistic for anybody to keep up because these teachers were getting burned out because they're developing their lessons, they're instructing students, they're meeting with them one on one through Zoom or Skype. And then they have their own children in the household that they have to teach their

lessons to. Then they're still planning. They're talking to colleagues. People were getting burned out after the first week. So and everybody and actually, and I put out one to teachers and one to families as well, pretty much saying that this is new to all of us and it's very stressful. And to think, you know, even me as a principal, I'm down here right now talking to you. I have a few phone calls afterwards. At some point, I have to go upstairs and teach phonics to my five year old.

So it's we're all running around and the days are going very fast. Nobody asked for this. I think we all have to remain flexible. You can teach your course and you can have good instruction remotely without hitting every single chapter or unit that you normally would. Our kids can still learn skills. We just have to approach it in a different way. And I think our teachers are really working that out.

Our teachers are sharing really good ideas of successful strategies that they're employing. And we also just put something out to students, a survey asking students to be students to say what activities are they really enjoying remotely and which ones are they either not enjoying or finding difficult. And we're going to send that to the teachers so that the teachers can also use that as some more data and make different informed decisions about going forward for the fourth quarter after spring break. So if the kids are really saying, you know, this activity, it helped me learn the skills.

I understand the content.

It didn't stress me out. It made sense. I thought it was a really good engaging activity. I want more teachers to use that activity. If kids are saying, honestly, this just felt like busy work and I felt like I wasn't learning from it. I also want teachers to know that.

So, yeah, talking of the kids, have you been speaking or interacting with any of the kids? Did you get any feedback personally?

Actually, it's really nice to see how many kids are reaching out through email to me, just checking in before becoming a principal. I was an assistant principal and we work very closely with our students and families and you get to know them pretty well. So we've been doing that. We have face. We have a PHS Facebook. We have an Instagram and Twitter. They'll reach out on that sometimes. But even at school, because I had been going in, any kids who came in to pick up devices,

they would just, you know, we would chat for a little bit. I'm trying to check in on kids, but I do have a staff of people. So teachers, guidance counselors, assistant principals who are checking in with kids, many through email, but more than you would think with phone, with, you know, good old fashion, pick up the phone and call someone and let them hear your voice and just check in to see how they're doing. And how are they doing? I mean, do you have any concrete example of kids, you know, taking it well or taking it

less well? I think our kids, I think they're handling this. We've been doing an online spirit week pretty much every week. There's a different thing for each day. Like I think yesterday was a shout out to your friends. So we've been doing throwback Thursday pictures of your friends, show your workspace pictures and the kids are on Instagram. They're putting their pictures up and they really they want to have fun.

They want to be teenagers. But this is hard for all of us. And I think right now of our seniors, this is their senior year. And you think of a spring of senior year, they look forward to so many things. You know, we have our gold key ceremony. We have prom. We have graduation. We have a season of sports that these kids didn't get to play in their last year of high

school. And I don't know how they're doing with that. I think they're rolling with the punches. But, you know, our kids, we are all suffering through some type of trauma right now. And I really want people to consider that. You know, I said at one point, I'm treating all kids is at risk right now. And it's the same thing with the adults. I'm also looking out for my teachers and I want to I'm checking in on them because these are unprecedented times, very difficult situations.

We have kids and teachers who, you know, as teachers, we're getting our paychecks, but their spouses might not be our kids. I don't know necessarily what their home lives are like. I don't know if they're worried about where they're getting their next meal from. Not everyone can go to Costco and stock up with a month's worth of food. So, you know, we're checking in on attendance each day with the kids. And if they go more than one day without checking in, we have our assistant principals and our guidance counselors calling and seeing what's going on.

In addition, if they do sign in for attendance, but they're not doing classwork, our teachers are letting us know. But our our kids are going through a lot. We have teenagers who are, you know, if their parents are working, they're providing not only child care for their younger siblings, but they're also in charge of their own schoolwork, their kids school. I'm sorry, their sibling schoolwork. So, you know, I have one case I have a junior and he's not doing any of his own work because he has a brother in middle school and two younger siblings in elementary schools. And that's his priority to make sure that they get their work done.

Well, he's not a high priority. So so we we have to really focus that it's not just about getting all your work done in high school. We have to kind of take into account that these kids are going through a lot right now.

And they're really trying to roll with the punches they put on a brave face, but they're not they're not adults yet. They're not not that even we're equipped to deal with this necessarily, but more so than them. I think I think we really have to keep looking out for them and just do what's best for them. Yeah. Yeah. Talking of the kids and their social life,

are you planning to to develop group works, you know, just like they work on projects among themselves during normal school year? Are you going to put that in place? We're talking about a lot of things right now. I know some clubs are still meeting online, so that's nice. So kids are still connecting that way. I know, for example, the yearbook, they meet pretty much every day, every evening. They're they're still trying and they're working hard to produce a yearbook, which we will get at some point.

I know my dean of students and I and my supervisor of school counseling, we've been working on different activities for the kids for whenever we are allowed to meet back up again when we're not social distancing again, different types of celebrations for our kids. Now, when they happen, that's up in the air. We're still going to try to make prom happen, whether it be in May at the Hyatt like we planned or at some point in June at the high school. We're still thinking of our yearbook distribution party. It might be June or it might be in August.

I don't know. But whenever we can get back face to face with the kids, we are planning a lot of celebrations and just to try to get back to normalcy and just make them feel that their serious or this one year of high school was not totally lost. Yeah. OK, so you're already planning for for the future. Now, now back to the to the reality today, how do you accommodate students with special needs?

I think that's that's been very challenging because. The kids have different accommodations and modifications, so you can always modify work and you can provide extra time and pretty much everyone's getting extra time right now. I think it's really we have our instructional aides have devices, so they're getting in touch with the kids to support the kids as they normally would. Our special education and general education teachers are working just checking in on kids, helping them.

They might have extra time where we have time built into the schedule. Normally, it's tire time where kids can meet with teachers. So outside of the normal class hours, our teachers are making themselves available. And I think it's really a case by case situation. But accommodating special needs kids, they're not if they're out of school. You know, you can give kids exercises to do for physical therapy or occupational therapy. But if you're not there to be able to demonstrate or help manipulate the person, it's not as effective. So parents are becoming therapists in that way.

And, you know, we're trying to provide services as best we can remotely, but nothing replaces that face to face interaction service provider. Yeah. OK. I was talking about this interview with one of my daughter, Violette, who is a senior. And she had a question for you. How do you deal with students that have no motivation for school and want to drop out of school? Well, the kids who when we have when school is normally in session and we go to the building every day, we know are at risk kids who aren't motivated to either go to class or even come to school. So for them, it's going to be amplified with the remote learning because we don't even get to see them. We don't get to provide them with the therapies and the counseling that we normally would.

So that goes back to the checking in. I actually you know, there's one kid I actually brought the device to his house two weeks ago because he hadn't come to pick it up. And, you know, we're just we're like I said, the phone call, the good old fashioned phone call. A lot of those kids, though, because we do know who they are and we have a connection with them. They might not necessarily have a connection to the school or school work, but they do have a connection to adults in the building that we're just trying to just let them know that we still care about them and see what we can do.

But, you know, to think that you're going to take a kid who didn't do well in school to begin with and turn them into a star student online, it's not I don't think it's realistic, but I still think you let them know that at the very least you care about them and you're there for them. And what about students that might be super comfortable with e-learning and in fact may tend to prefer it to, you know, the actual physical class? Do you think that will change, you know, your reality when you go back to normal? I do think I think this is going to change. Remote learning is going to change a lot.

I mean, there's, you know, maybe we will do online classes. That could be something in the future. Now that we have this platform, we have experience with it. We're working through the kinks. But I think more it's going to change how we deliver instruction and how accessible the content is to kids. So what does it mean now if you if you're absent, whether it be you're sick or you have a field trip or you have to travel, teachers can put content

and they're more comfortable with putting content online. You might not miss that content now. You can access it at any time or even if you were in school, but you just need to review the lesson a little bit more. If your teacher recorded themselves and they could put it online, you can just go back and review that. So I think that's a really nice benefit that's going to come out of this. I also think it can help us maybe with our snow days in the future.

Maybe we don't have to have snow days that we have to make up if we can say that we had instruction.

But I think this experience has shown us how vulnerable we are. I think we're working through it and doing pretty well with it. But I think it's really revealed some blind spots. You know, we thought our kids all had devices and had access. And this showed that they didn't necessarily or even kids who are not in need financially. They still might only have one device in a household of three kids and two parents who also have to do their own work from home.

So I think I'm an optimist, first of all. But when I look at this, I don't see all negatives. I think at the end of this will come out stronger. I think our instruction is going to be better and how we deliver and how kids access it and families access it. Right. So you told me that already. I mean, at the beginning, you were planning for only two weeks. And now you know that it's going to last way longer.

Do you find it easier to plan the long term than just doing it for two weeks?

I think long term just removes the uncertainty. And I think that's just helpful on everybody, mentally, emotionally. If you just know, OK, you know what? I don't have to worry about two big chunks. I can just plan for the rest of the year. And if we go back, that's great. I think that's helped people tremendously just to get into that mindset. And even as we go into our last quarter, you know, everyone was worried.

What are we going to do about grades? I'm not worried about grades. I know at the end of the day, I asked my teachers to treat our kids as at risk, which means, you know what? We're not going to hurt them. We have three good quarters of grades of from instruction in person. We'll see how it goes. But I think.

I think the two week chunks, how we started off and then think, and that's why I said to you, this is a minute to minute situation, because we first said this, we said two weeks and then we'll have spring break and we're going to come back. And then one day into it, I think the governor came on and said, no, this is going to be much longer. And and anybody who watches the news, you know, some people say June, some people say September, some people,

who knows what they say. I think for our teachers just to say and for our kids to say, hey, plan the rest of the year. That's the worst case scenario. And then, of course, if we go back, that's just we'll be OK. It'll be better. OK. What has been the your main key learning so far?

I think I've always liked to have control of situations. And I think you have to just embrace the fact that things are going to change. You're going to have to adjust. And I have really good, capable people on my team at the high school, the administrators, the teachers, the aid, the secretaries. They've been very responsive and. And I know that I can I don't have to do everything.

I don't have that have the answer right away. I have really good people with me who seek answers and the problem solvers. And listen, if we can get this and we could put this together in two days, we can do anything. Any advice for students, parents and other teachers out there? Yes, I think I think you have to take the pressure off yourself sometimes and just you have to remain flexible. I keep saying flexible is our new context.

And also reach out if you're frustrated or, you know, you're overwhelmed. Reach out to someone. You know, we have a lot of adults at the school. This goes for teachers and students and parents. We have a lot of adults who, you know, we're putting content out because we're trying to, you know, give people the sense of normalcy. Like this is my, you know, my classwork for today. But if you're feeling overwhelmed and you contact me,

I'm going to work with you individually. At the end of the day, I just want people to just know we're going to get through this. I want people to not panic. And we're here for you. OK, good. Well, this is back in America. And I always ask two questions at the end of interviews, which are what is America to you? And do you have any books, movies or TV series that you recommend for everyone?

OK, so actually, so what is America to me? And I have a very simple answer, but then with an explanation. America is my home and which I think means that, you know, sometimes you love it, sometimes you hate it, but it's always a source of comfort. You know, I travel a lot. I do travel outside the country quite often. And there's always something about I love my experiences outside the country. And I love experiencing new cultures and learning from people.

But there's always something about going home that I just look forward to. And it's you get here. It's kind of just a nice sigh. I'm back home. And that's what I think about when I think about America. I love I love this place. I like how people here feel empowered and entitled. To have an opinion and to want to work to make it better. And, you know, we talk about the good, the bad, the ugly.

And that's what America is to me. Good. Good. Now, any books, movies? Yes. Well, books. I am an avid reader. I was given a book by my former principal, Gary Snyder, a few years ago. It was Daring Greatly by Brene Brown. And I read it years ago and I thought it was great. I'm now rereading it.

I actually I have a book club tonight where we're talking about it. But I really like it. I think it's very timely right now. It talks about being open to vulnerability and letting go of control and trying to plan every single exit strategy. And so I think that's a great book that everybody can and should read and reread. Another book I read recently was written by two former Princeton High School students.

It's called Tell Me Who You Are. And it's written by Winona Guo and Priya Volchi. And we actually did a book club with the faculty and students because we're trying to improve our own racial literacy at Princeton High School in order to recognize racism, counter racism and react to it. And it's just a really nice book of stories about honoring people's identities.

So, OK, and as for movies and TV, I'm really I don't watch too many movies or TV. I tried to watch Netflix the past two nights and it keeps freezing up because everybody else is watching it.

But yes. All right. Good. Well, thank you so much. Is there anything you wish to add? No, I mean, thank you for this opportunity. And I hope, you know, even if it helps just one person realize that we're pretty resilient as human beings and we're going to get through this. And I think we're going to be better at the end of it.

I don't I don't wish this on anyone, but this is our world right now. And I think it's going to be OK. Thank you, Jiridhika. Thank you for your work. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye now.