Lock it down!

It's a quintessential scene in a disaster movie: the peril is impending, the people surge for their lifeboats, their security from zombies, their escape hatch and their dangling rope from a leaving helicopter. The protagonists of the movies just make it to their refuge, and the camera sweeps to those who just missed as the velociraptors sweep in, as the lava pours down the valley to cut off all hopes of escape. It's time like these that almost evoke the cinematic. I was told of a real scene today that made me think of these movies. Yet in this actual story, it wasn't the apparent threat, this virulent disease, that was surging forth but the measures to ameliorate it that are an existential danger to companies. It was the sign of an organisation sitting on the beach when the tsunami roars in. There were tears and there will be tears, but before I tell you about that let me set the scene from a mountain top where I peered to the beach below:

"Going online" might sound like an easy process but for any school its a massive undertaking. I've never been tempted to move our school online, and I don't think we've been depriving our students of much by not. The virus indirectly got our feet wet though: in February we were going to send a teacher to China to prepare students for study in New Zealand but just as we got all of our ducks in a row, the covid-19 outbreak in China shot the plan out of the air. Instead we chose to prepare them remotely. The platform was chosen while I was still in a lock-down in China but with my acquiescence. I eventually returned and supported the teacher and learned a little bit along side him. I even covered a part of his class to get my first taste. Perhaps it was because I'd already been under one lock down, when we had our first case I proposed setting up our academic pandemic plan and promptly held a non-standard team-meeting to focus on safety procedures and an initiation into the platform for the whole team. We then did a whole organisation, whole study body campaign of information, then I helped teachers do a session in their classes to have the students download the app with support from the different language team members. Then we were to have a "trial" day where everyone would do a class online. Our problem was this week was meant to be a 6-weekly test week. It would usually be a Tues/Wed affair with Thursday for marking and result approval. I targeted Friday 27 March as my day to have all classes online as a trial for everyone to learn.

Then the PM raised us to level 2 on Saturday and I went fully for pulling testing to one day, Monday, and the online trial to Tuesday. Then there were another 30 cases on Sunday and the CEO put all programmes on pause for the current week at our sister school and asked what I wanted to do. I insisted on plan A, saying we'd complete testing on the Monday and do Tuesday as an online class and pause from Wednesday. Everything just worked. Even the announcement of level 3 on Monday didn't shake the plan. All testing was done. Online classes were scheduled. Communications went out. Monday was done. 

And today is that Tuesday. Our teachers were plunged online. It's hard when you're used to one mode and you're forced into another. Even though they had two weeks to familiarise and even had me to coax them into trying it out with me on the weekends, many still weren't sure before classes. There was a bit of panic and floundering but also some realisations and learning. There was one student complaint. One teacher who couldn't follow directions. Today is done. We have a few days to consolidate how we're doing things before we properly launch next Monday. I'm just glad we scrapped through to an acceptable way of doing things.

That takes me back to that beach: The actual setting was an educational industry meeting, perhaps as recently as yesterday, where there was an educational leader from an English language institution which had dragged its feet, or perhaps didn't move them at all, to get "online". This person was crying in front of the group, not knowing what to do. Their organisation was not ready and the virus had moved fast and, now, to actually implement online teaching is tantamount to impossible. Teachers, even techsavvy ones, might not "get" how the new platform works or how to prepare and present material. Language learners of low levels, with varying technology are no longer concentrated in the one room for "easy" training. (Actually even explaining to them step by step in person can be a challenge.) There can be no classes. There can be no training. There can be no teaching. Many of them communicate just with e-mails and phone calls and they have no tools to really even overcome the chasm that they're about to dive into. The tidal waves washes in with torrential tears.

And now it's a game of 28 days later... Not the zombie movie, it's the length of a notice period and also the length that the Level 4 Alert is pencilled in to last. If the alert were just to be 4 weeks, it'd be the most ironic notice period ever. But it is hard to say when real normalcy will resume. For our own school, students will end their enrolments but many students will almost have to extend their study as there are no flights back to their countries. (Aside: What does a government do with people who are overstaying their visas or have rejected visas?) For a period we worried that we would have no more students coming in. Now it's possible that our students won't be able to leave. We've now entered the twilight zone. We're in lock down. 

I'm now an expert on twilight living: I spent about two weeks of my three week China trip in lockdownesque situation in the village. I spent another two weeks in self-isolation after returning from China. And now I'll be in another lockdown here for at least another four weeks. Lockdown. Lockdown. Lockdown. But there's no safer place than the home. The global deaths from this thing went from 10,000 to 15,000 in five days. That's a 50% increase in five days for something that pretty much has always seemed devastating. Die in, die out. Who would want to be on the streets?