Abstract:

The paradox of the horrific COVID-19 pandemic is that it has also been a great teacher to many school leaders trying to deal with change. Whilst during the total lockdown period schools have been deserted with no learning taking place in poor schools, the pandemic has forced teachers and their schools to adapt to new ways of teaching as they faced huge challenges. Amongst other lessons learnt by several school leaders is the use various media to teach learners from indigent families. Use of cell phones, radios, community structures such as social clubs have proved fruitful in desperate times, when school attendance appeared a remote possibility. Many teacher leaders have seen what they have missed in supporting other teachers to cope with disruptive nature of COVID-19 on the culture of learning and teaching. The four principals in this study realised what their teacher leadership programs missed before the outbreak of the pandemic. With under resourced schools and families with no social capital the principals devised means of how school leadership teams can equip all teachers cope in the worst of challenging times. This study demonstrates lessons from four poor schools in how teacher leaders supported peers to uphold their professional roles in daunting times as they tried to avert COVID-19’s negative impact. Amongst the strategies that teacher leaders discovered as areas of importance were; collaboration with the community and parents; instil a sense of all teachers perceiving themselves as leaders, as well as ensuring that all teachers and parents understand the value of technology in the classrooms. The conclusions in the paper illustrate that many schools that failed to overcome the pandemic’s negative impacts were schools without a sound teacher leadership. Aspects such as poverty, and lack of material resources were conspicuous in copious poor schools, but the lack of teacher leadership was among the main causes of COVID 19 rendering many of these schools dysfunctional.

Keywords:

Collaboration, Pandemic, Professionalism, Resilience, Teacher leadership.