IMPROVISING A VIRTUAL SCHOOL: DANCING THROUGH THE COVID-19 STORM

Abstract

In this dissertation, I will use embodied epistolary autoethnography and reflexively layered dance improvisations to explore the process and experience of creating and administering a K-12 virtual school in Ontario, Canada through the period of August 2020 to June 2022, during the COVID-19 pandemic. I will use the framework of improvisational practice in the Arts, as well as research in organisational improvisation, disaster management and cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), to examine what it was like to adapt and evolve pedagogical and administrative structures to fit the novel context of universalizing online learning in a system of public education. My conceptual framework, based in dramaturgy, will support an examination of how online learning blurred the lines between the well-established front-and-backstage of elementary and secondary schools and the traditional cultures of those school systems by pushing teachers and administrators to improvise their practice and leaving them “professionally naked” (Hargreaves, 2021, p. 1853) in the face of scrutiny from students, parents, and the public. I will interrogate my own creative process as an artist-educator-administrator as well as a practitioner-researcher and reflect on what this experience has taught me about leading in a time of crisis and what are important considerations and recommendations if online learning is to become a more permanent feature of Canadian public school systems.