Irvin: School turned pandemic panic into focus

The COVID-19 pandemic has demanded adaptation from nearly everyone, but Havre Public Schools staff and administration, along with educators around the world, have had to make big changes and Highland Park Early Primary School Principal Mark Irvin is no exception.

Irvin said the pandemic has made for a stressful year but still-rewarding school year in 2020-21 and while things are getting closer and closer to normal, the beginning of the pandemic brought a great amount of worry.

He said starting a school year in a format they were not used to put everyone in something of a panic state, with everyone worried about meeting the requirements and goals they needed to meet under the unusual and stressful circumstances.

However, he said, it didn't take long for the energy everyone spent worrying to be put toward adapting lesson plans, reorganizing classrooms and keeping everyone safe, something he's very proud of his colleagues for.

"They took that panic and turned it into a focus," he said.

Irvin said there were times that it felt like they were just holding on as best they could but his staff stepped up in ways that surprised and impressed him.

"You're kinda just keeping the ship afloat and pumping out the water as you go," he said.

Last year, when there was much less information about the virus or a potential vaccine, he said, cable news media inadvertently created a fearful environment by over-covering the issue which contributed to people's high stress levels, but working with the Hill County Health Department and tuning out the media to some degree helped a lot.

He said the pandemic had a clear effect on the parents in the community as well, who he thinks did an admirable job helping their children with remote learning while juggling their own jobs and arranging childcare, something he said couldn't have been easy.

Irvin said he's always been proud of the relationship Highland Park has cultivated with parents, and the fact that the school had to remain closed to them really affected him on a personal level.

"This building has always been very open to the public," he said. "We have a lot of parent volunteers ... and it's been sad not having the parents here. It's sad to not have that connection."

He said students from Havre High School normally visit students, as well, for the sake of role-modeling, but that needed to be scaled back as well as some annual traditions like the school's Christmas celebrations and it was sad to see those go, too.

Irvin said the past year has made the importance of these events and the school's openness to the community all the more clear, and he hopes the return of a more traditional school year will improve things.

"I'm looking forward to having those things happen again," he said.

Safety and masks

Irvin said the school has taken the issue of staff and student safety very seriously and he spent a great deal of time worried about everyone's health.

Part of that approach was making sure masks were being worn, which became a highly divisive issue in the past year.

He said attending school board meetings this year was sometimes difficult when mask policies were discussed because it so divided the community, which disheartened but did not surprise him.

"For me, it was somewhat expected," he said. "I mean, I don't want to get too political, but you just look at the last election and how divided everything was, this was a bit of a microcosm of that."

Irvin said it's nothing new to hear passionate and opposing opinions at school board meetings, but the scale of the conflict and the derision often directed at the board made for an unpleasant experience.

"It was hard to watch," he said.

He said he values the strong relationship the schools and the community have, but the issue of masks and the negativity it bred strained members of the board as well as administrators and the community itself.

Despite the conflict, Irvin said, he does hope things are safe enough in the area that students don't need to wear masks at all when the 2021-22 year begins.

"I'd like to see those smiling faces again," he said.

The effect on students

Irvin said the students of Highland Park have shown themselves to be highly resilient in the past year of the pandemic.

He said not being able to have students on-site is especially difficult for young elementary school children because, in addition to academics, they are learning how to interact with others and work together, which is something best done in person.

However, he said, the school coordinated with parents to address this issue and they really helped with that emotional side of education, something for which he is very grateful.

He said online learning actually went much better than he expected, and while some students did have trouble adjusting to the new format, many excelled.

Irvin said there is still a learning gap that exists due to the shift to online learning, which he said he considers an inevitability due to lost class time. However, he said, the number of students behind where they need to be is lower than he expected as is the severity of the gap, and progress to close said gaps is already being made.

"The way we track students and the fact that we're really looking at a more traditional setting next year, I think you're going to see those gaps close and even disappear in the next year," he said.

The effect on the future

Irvin said while the next year will be more traditional with students on-site for a full five days a week, the past year has affected the way the school will do things, possibly forever, and certainly for the better.

"I don't know that we'll ever go back to what we would consider a normal school year," he said.

He said teachers' use of technology in the classroom has opened up new avenues of learning that can improve how teaching is done in the elementary school.

"Some of the things we learned out of necessity are really good things to keep in place," he said.

The effect on Irvin

While much of the stress of the past year stemmed from his concern for his staff and students health and safety, Irvin's life wasn't unaffected by the pandemic, especially when he caught COVID-19 late last year.

He said he didn't get it as bad as many others, avoiding the typical upper-respiratory problems altogether, but for a solid two or three days the aches were bad enough that he could barely move.

Thankfully, he said, he got his sense of taste and smell back just in time for Christmas ham, though some people he knows haven't been so lucky, with their senses of taste still gone.

He also said things he would normally have done to relieve stress or have fun, like attending sports games or going to concerts, just weren't happening, which did have an effect on him, though he said that's something he has in common with most people.

Irvin said the fact that so many restaurants were closed also had less than ideal effects.

"I discovered how bad of a cook I really am," he said.

He said he also worried about his own children, who were in college, but their schools handled the situation well and it wasn't a huge stressor.

At work the pandemic necessitated a lot more meetings and more time for coordination between administrators, staff and teachers, but the more things go back to normal the less extra time has been needed.

"There were some long weeks and late nights," he said.

On top of the extra time, he said, adjusting to new technology while attending so many more meetings made things difficult despite the patience and expertise of the schools' IT department, whom he thanked for their work.

"I don't care if I never go to another zoom meeting again," he said.