TOMORROW'S LEADERSHIP CONVERSATIONS 

with International School Leaders Around the World: 

All international school senior leaders are welcome.  A Weekly CONVERSATION  between School Heads and Senior Leaders– #26. Our discussions continue to be contemporary, important and a time we teach each other.  

 

With thanks to Will Richardson who has facilitated our Thursday CONVERSATIONS since the very beginning. 

The weekly Thursday CONVERSATIONS between Latin America school heads and senior leaders resumes in collaboration with Tri-Association and AASSA. All are welcome to join the discussion and we will also include guest speakers, specific to the Latin America circumstance and needs.  Our sessions, as before, are hosted by Sonia Keller and Dereck Rhoads.   

A PRIMER FOR COACHING YOUR COMMUNITY THROUGH ANXIETY, FEAR AND UNCERTAINTY

A Four-Step Coaching Model from Stephanie Rogen of GLP

We talked through the “Four C’s” of a coaching conversation

 

• Context: What’s up? What are you feeling?
• Content: Why does it matter? What are the implications?
• Choices: What are the possibilities? What might you do?
• Conduct: How will I choose to act? What decisions make sense?

 

Moreover, we explored how a coaching conversation helps you prepare for decision making with exploratory dialogue -- improving the conditions for making good choices - together!

We focused on a few key ideas to hold top of mind as we move through a structured conversation when stress and anxiety are acute:

 

• Take a deep breath: do this for yourself and give permission to others to do the same. In pausing, what can we name about how we are feeling? Can we be both non-judgmental and specific about what’s happening for each of us, how we are reacting, and what that means as we move forward together towards solutions?
• Don’t underestimate the value of time: whatever the circumstance time is on your side . Even in the most urgent of situations there is value in taking pause and assessing the best way to act. And throughout Covid, we have learned that in many cases, time is the primary determinant for what we can and cannot do -- so be discerning about where to place your energies! Time is also a gift, and giving your folks a bit more time to process and execute may be all you need to get where you need to go.
• Attend to stamina: your stamina and the stamina of others. Anxiety and stress are depleting - and fatigue exacerbates anxiety and stress. By checking in regularly, you can identify who needs some extra time and who can take up the slack -- and create a bond of mutuality and trust in which everyone can thrive.
• Don’t be afraid to change practices: many of you offered new ways of connecting with your colleagues and your communities in this time of uncertainty - whether in person or virtually you are taking more time upfront to check in and create space to process what’s happening for people so that you can move forward with great speed and efficacy.
• Remember -- leadership is a choice: right now, leaders are “dilemma machines” navigating lots of not so great trade-offs. So, what you model, how you listen, engage, and include, how you pace the work for yourself and others, and how you manage fluctuating emotions, explore options, and agree to move forward are all markers of your leadership. You’ve got to show up emotionally and intellectually, and invite others to do the same.

Times are hard, and people are working on “surge power”. Kindness, patience, and a resistance to judgment will go a long ways towards building the collaborative leadership and sense of purpose that brings your community through this sustained period of complexity. So, take a deep breath and hang in there!

Taking context, content and choice and putting decisions into action

And as we look across geography within the AAIE community, CONTEXT is everything and the place to start when coaching the team beyond anxiety and into action.  

THE COURAGE TO CONTINUE

–with thanks to Jessica Gilway, School Director, Santa Cruz Cooperative School 

A No-Cost WEBINAR for the AAIE Community that Dares to Ask the Question: 

Is this the moment "school" changes forever? 

Published Today From Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Practical Scenarios for Talking About the Interpersonal and Scientific Side of Staying Safe

–The Safety Scenarios to Talk About–

 

• Scenario 1: How do I talk with a friend or family member who doesn’t seem to be taking the COVID-19 threat seriously?
• Scenario 2: How can I talk with my parents about their risky behaviors?
• Scenario 3: My friends are having a wedding and I don’t feel safe attending. How can I tell them I don’t want to go?
• Scenario 4: What’s the best way to talk to my teenagers about taking COVID-19 risks seriously?
• Scenario 5: My boss says we will be resuming domestic work travel this fall. How can I say I don’t feel comfortable with this, even if I am not at “high risk” of serious illness?
• Scenario 6: My company has mandated a full-time return to the office. We are supposed to wear masks and practice social distancing, but most of my coworkers don’t follow these practices and some even joke about them. How can I feel safer at work without alienating myself?
• Scenario 7: If my kids are returning to school this fall, I need to make sure they understand the complexity of the pandemic so that they take guidelines seriously—such as wearing masks, staying apart from one another. What’s an effective way to explain this to them without scaring them too much?

–THE NEWS of COVID-19–

24,007,049 Cases Worldwide

(Johns Hopkins CSSE)

–A Quote in the Time of COVID–

"We are learning new things about this virus every day and journalists are critical to helping us communicate that information to the public in a way that saves lives.

We will continue to promote science, solutions and solidarity because we believe to our core that we do it best, when we do it together."  

–Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu

India Is in Denial about the COVID-19 Crisis

India is now ahead of all other countries in terms of the number of new recorded COVID-19 cases per day—close to 70,000 in mid-August. That’s about one fourth of world-wide new cases. Only two countries are anywhere close: Brazil and the United States; and India has lagged behind those two countries in achieving a reduction in daily cases. Further, recorded cases in India are likely to be a small fraction of all COVID-19 infections. That could be true in many countries, but the ratio of infections to recorded cases seems particularly large in India—at least 20:1, judging from two recent serological surveys, in Delhi and Mumbai respectively. This would mean that India already had more than 50 million COVID-19 infections, compared with a recorded figure of 2.5 million.

 

The silver lining is that, for reasons that are as yet unclear, COVID-19 mortality in India seems relatively low. The same surveys suggest that the infection-fatality rate (IFR) may be as low as one per thousand. If so, India may not be heading towards a major mortality crisis, or rather a major crisis of COVID-19 mortality, at least relative to normal levels of mortality. COVID-19 deaths so far add up to less than 1 percent of annual deaths from all causes in India. Per million population, there have been just 38 so far, compared with more than 500 in the US.

 

Overall mortality may spike, however, for two reasons. First, routine health services have been massively displaced by COVID-19. So far, COVID-19 infections were heavily concentrated in large cities located in India’s more prosperous states: Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, among others. The preparedness of the health system is much higher there than elsewhere. But recorded cases are now rising fast in India’s poorer states, where health services are very fragile. As the COVID-19 crisis absorbs their meager resources, many public health centers have stopped providing routine services. Even child immunization has been discontinued for months in many states.

(Scientific American)

 

Covid-19 Mortality May Relate to Presence of "Germinal Centers"

At the top of the long list of uncertainties about COVID-19 is whether people who recover will develop durable immune responses to the coronavirus that causes it. A research team that has autopsied people who died from COVID-19 has now discovered they lack so-called germinal centers, classrooms in the spleen and lymph nodes in which immune cells learn to mount a long-lasting antibody response to a pathogen. Although the finding may not apply to people who have mild or asymptomatic coronavirus infections, it may help explain COVID-19 progression in the sickest cases and provide important insights to vaccine developers. The study, led by immunologist Shiv Pillai of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard and published last week in Cell, may take on increased importance as a report out yesterday provided the first compelling evidence that a person can become reinfected with SARS-CoV-2, suggesting antibody protection could be fleeting in some people. (sciencemag.org)

 

Covid-19 Tactics, Discipline and World Economies

In response to the new coronavirus, many governments deployed draconian tactics never used in modern times: severe and broad restrictions on daily activity that helped send the world into its deepest peacetime slump since the Great Depression. The equivalent of 400 million jobs have been lost world-wide, 13 million in the U.S. alone. Global output is on track to fall 5% this year, far worse than during the financial crisis, according to the International Monetary Fund. Five months later, the evidence suggests lockdowns were an overly blunt and economically costly tool. As cases flare up throughout the U.S., some experts are urging policy makers to pursue more targeted restrictions and interventions rather than another crippling round of lockdowns. “We’re on the cusp of an economic catastrophe,” said James Stock, a Harvard University economist who, with Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina and others, is modeling how to avoid a surge in deaths without a deeply damaging lockdown. “We can avoid the worst of that catastrophe by being disciplined,” Mr. Stock said. (The Wall Street Journal)

 

The Pandemic is Still Expanding:  WHO

The COVID-19 pandemic is still expanding, but the rise in cases and deaths has slowed globally, except for southeast Asia and the eastern Mediterranean regions, the World Health Organization (WHO) said. In its latest epidemiological update, issued last night, it said that the Americas remain the hardest-hit region, accounting for half of newly reported cases and 62% of the 39,240 deaths worldwide in the past week. More than 23.65 million people have been reported to be infected by the coronavirus globally and 811,895 have died, according to a Reuters tally on Tuesday. (Reuters)

 

Second Wave in Italy?

Cases of the coronavirus have surged in Italy, topping 1,000 on both days of the weekend and raising fears that the country may be facing a devastating second wave. The new clusters are scattered around the country and are being blamed on young holiday-makers who ignore government guidelines as they drink and socialize. Yesterday there were 953 new cases and four deaths. Several German states said that they were preparing to restrict gatherings to try to control a rise in infections there. (The Times of London)

 

Spain Back on Lockdown? 

Madrid could be put back under lockdown, the official in charge of Spain’s health emergencies warned last night. “If the numbers continue to rise, drastic measures will have to be taken,” Fernando Simón said. The region of Madrid, which includes the capital, registered more than 15,000 new cases last week. Mr Simón said that apart from “a type of lockdown”, without specifying details, other strategies to combat the contagion could be considered. One small town in the Madrid region, Tielmes, is already under partial lockdown, with all restaurants and bars closed. (via The Times of London)

 

Chinese Vaccine is in Play with Health Workers

Chinese health authorities have been inoculating medical workers and other at-risk groups against Covid-19 for more than a month as part of an emergency access program, a senior health official has revealed, as he flagged plans to include other essential workers ahead of the winter flu season. National coronavirus vaccine task force chief Zheng Zhongwei confirmed the existence of the program for the first time in a primetime interview with state media outlet CCTV on Saturday. He said the emergency use was limited to people such as medical personnel, epidemic prevention officials and border inspection workers. (Caixin Global)

 

The Virus is Less Deadly in Europe– Reasons Uncertain

Covid-19 is becoming less deadly in Europe but we don't know why. It is becoming increasingly clear that people are less likely to die if they get covid-19 now compared with earlier in the pandemic, at least in Europe, but the reasons why are still shrouded in uncertainty.

 

One UK doctor has said that the coronavirus was “getting a little bit less angry”, while an infectious disease consultant at the National University of Singapore claimed that a mutated version of the coronavirus, D614G, is making the illness less deadly.

In England, the proportion of people infected by the coronavirus who later died was certainly lower in early August than it was in late June. Over the period, this infection fatality rate (IFR) dropped by between 55 and 80 per cent, depending on which data set was used, found Jason Oke at the University of Oxford and his colleagues.

 

“This doesn’t seem to be the same disease or as lethal as it was earlier on when we saw huge numbers of people dying,” he says. For example, the week beginning 17 August saw 95 people die and just over 7000 cases across the UK. In the first week of April, 7164 died and nearly 40,000 tested positive. Dividing deaths by cases gives a crude case fatality rate of around 1 per cent in August, compared with nearly 18 per cent in April.

 

These figures don’t represent the true IFRs at these times, both because deaths lag behind infections by a few weeks, and because testing regimes have changed over time, but are indicative of a shift in the IFR. Oke and his colleagues used a more sophisticated method to estimate the change in IFR.

 

Covid-19 is known to be less risky the younger you are, so the changing demographic of those being infected could be one plausible reason that the disease currently seems less deadly. Yet Oke doesn’t think the change in age distribution alone is enough to account for what is happening. There are still a lot of older people testing positive, he says.

 

Several researchers have told New Scientist that the other main possible explanation is that cases are being treated more effectively in hospitals. The jury is out on whether one variant of the coronavirus, known as D614G, explains why covid-19 is becoming less deadly. Paul Tambyah at the National University of Singapore told Reuters that the rise of the D614G mutation had coincided with drops in death rates in some countries, suggesting that it might be “more infectious but less deadly”. (The New Scientist)

 

Sending College Students Home?

More than 500 cases at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Nearly 160 at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Dozens at the University of Southern California. Colleges and universities that brought students back to campus are expressing alarm about coronavirus infections emerging as classes have barely started, raising the possibility everyone could be sent home. “The rise we’ve seen in recent days is unacceptable, and if unchecked, threatens our ability to complete the rest of the semester on campus,” University of Alabama President Stuart Bell said at a news conference on Monday, five days after classes resumed, as the mayor of Tuscaloosa temporarily closed bars and warned that the local health system could become overwhelmed. (The Washington Post)

–Tracking the Virus– 

The WHO has a new reporting protocol: 

We will capture the most up-to-date figures using the revised format

–FROM JOHNS HOPKINS CSSE–

The Cultures of Dignity Resources for Supporting

Social-Emotional Wellness 

A Final Note: The AAIE COVID-19 Briefing is provided to support your leadership for the school community you serve. We encourage you to use these resources in any way, shape or form that helps you, your communications and toward furthering close relationships across your community.  – The AAIE Board