Weekly Message from Head of School 2022/12/11-2022/12/17
Dear Keystone Community,
Greetings to the Keystone community! Polls suggest that this week up to 60% of the population of Beijing is infected with COVID-19. I hope that your homes are spared the worst of this, but I know many of you are suffering. This week we are announcing that we will remain online for the rest of the semester, and that we will cancel our January Programs, including the Winter Archway Programs. These optional programs that some families signed up for were designed to gather large groups of students and are not feasible in this pandemic context. Therefore, we look forward to our return to campus after the winter holiday.
Last week I shared the signals that we would need to see in our community to return to learning on our campus:
Reliable access to home isolation for positive cases and close contacts
Confidence in our on-campus layers of safety to minimize risk of transmission
Decreasing prevalence of COVID in the community
With 1 and 2 assured, now we are just waiting on number 3. To support our understanding of the prevalence of COVID in our community, we are launching our Daily Health Check-in. This is a survey that all community members will complete every day so that we can have reliable and accurate data about the health of our community to make informed decisions about school operations. We will ask families to do this even though they are not coming to campus for the next couple of weeks, so that we can design and build our campus systems for managing and responding to this data.
Because we began piloting this survey with our employees this week, we know that between 25-28% of our employees’ households had positive cases of COVID-19—a figure that would have been unthinkable just a few weeks ago. The rate of transmission of the virus at this moment in Beijing is extraordinary, and we are all so fortunate that most cases recover quickly and with manageable symptoms. Still, we know that this is far from pleasant. And, even thought that number is unthinkably high, we are glad that it is lower than the city-wide prevalence. This coming week we will roll out the daily health check-in to students and families so that we can improve our understanding of how our entire community is doing.
We all know, anecdotally, that as a community, we are not doing great. This week a family member sent a touching photo of their sick child sleeping on the floor under their desk while a Keystone teacher was talking on their computer screen. To that parent, it was a sign of the child’s perseverance, a desire to learn, even in challenging circumstances—they shared the photo to express their gratitude to Keystone’s faculty for continuing to support student learning through these challenges. Seen another way, we might wonder, should that child be sleeping in bed? At home “sick” -- taking an actual sick day, instead of learning or working while sick? Online learning complicates our boundaries of home and recovery. That student would never have come to campus with a blanket and pillow and curled up while their teacher lectured. It is easy to think that because we can turn on the computer and be “present” we should. And maybe to some extent that is okay. We are squeezing what we can out of this month.
Yesterday I tested positive for COVID. I did the same thing that student did--I got up, attended the meetings I thought I had to, and slept in between. I am not sharing that because it was the right thing to do, but to share that I too know how tempting it is to think that we can do it all. Would I recover more quickly if I just shut down for a day or two? Perhaps. Some experts are suggesting that this week or next we will hit the peak of this wave of infections in Beijing, and that case counts will start to decline. As we finish this challenging semester, each of our students (and all of us!) should feel supported as they determine what they can finish, and what they cannot. Each of us must set reasonable boundaries for ourselves and acknowledge that it is okay to step away and take a break or a sick day (or several!) if you need it. With respect to our students’ learning, they will recover from this time. Learning is happening, and that learning will be re-enforced and deepened when students return to campus. We are all in the same boat, we will continue to get through this together!
It turns out that we are fortunate that our school calendar changes created a longer winter break this year. It will allow us, in this very abnormal school year, to devote more time than we normally would mid-year to rest and recovery. It will allow us to rejuvenate, stay safe, and prepare as the city responds to this wave of infections. We are almost there, and we can do it.
Warmly,
Emily McCarren
