At Al Salam Community School, we are planning to fully reopen in September after 15 weeks of distance learning spanning from March until July.

While the academic progress of our pupils is, of course, a focus, so too is their emotional and social wellbeing.

After all, the loss of social interaction over the past six months has been the biggest impact for all of us.

Many schools may well be focusing on this, too, but I fear many will see this as needing to promote skills such as resilience, whereas it is compassion and empathy that would help us all move forward from this period - emotional skills that are best embodied by charity.

Why charity matters

At our school, we have placed a fixed period in the timetable, specifically 1/40th or 2.5 per cent of the timetable in the last period in the week, dedicated specifically for charity: giving, being kind and helping others. 

Both in the primary school and in the secondary school, we have coordinated provision so all members of the school community will be involved in charitable acts. These include acts of kindness, such as helping the teacher tidy the classroom as per schools in Japan, or older students volunteering to read to younger students or helping them with their numeracy skills.

It could also culminate in a form of community service and the Duke of Edinburgh award, or even bigger consequences such as social enterprise start-ups.

What makes this initiative unique is not only the alignment from Year 1 to Year 13, but that all staff members are required to get involved - teaching, non-teaching, admin and site staff - thus breaking any perceived hierarchy that often hampers schools on the lines of teaching staff and support staff or management. It’s an intentional push for an egalitarian school community whose interdependence of all staff and students is truly realised, respected and regarded in a setting of mutual appreciation.

And the timing is also deliberate: what a way to end the week or even start the weekend...a sense of personal satisfaction and even fulfilment for the mind, body and soul. A way to bridge the school and home into a sense of collective moral purpose.

Care and connection

This matters a huge amount right now. After all, if during lockdown we were ‘virtually’ #inthistogether, then we must demonstrate this in actual reality in our schools. 

There is a need for humanity underpinned with universal values that connect all of us beyond our own needs.

The voids that need filling since emerging from distance learning are immense. It is not a case of addressing Maslow’s needs or diving into what lies beneath the (Weaver’s cultural) iceberg, but an authentic sense of community is very much needed. 

There’s a sense of the greater good, as we show mutual care and understanding for everyone in the school community. And beyond this, it will serve our children well, long into their futures.

As a fifth of this century has already passed, I would suggest that the need for 21st-century skills is actually rather behind the curve. Critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity should all be part of the mainstream of effective school provision.

I would argue the schools that coped with effective technological provision may have technically addressed these 21st-century skills in essence (some could say creativity was actually replaced with innovation), but the application of these skills has literally become socially distant.

Two more Cs that we ought to address as a priority are ‘care’ and ‘connection’, which is in turn underpinned with a third C - ‘consideration’.

A gauge for such consideration can be evaluated in some rather easy observations - I call them the ‘supermarket trolley test’. Do we leave the empty trolley in the car park next to our car bay rather than wheel it back to the trolley bay? Are we really in such a hurry or so selfish to block a car park slot and be happy to make the person collecting trolleys have to traverse the whole car park?

A need for ‘ethical intelligence’

Challenging pupils in this area is not merely a nice thing to do. It is critical.

Set against the backdrop of the fourth industrial revolution, the ‘internet of things’, and 5G, the world is certainly in a new era of a being a more technologically interwoven place. Effective schools certainly reflected this during distance learning. We all have to adopt and adapt to this new normal.

However, amid the need for more empathy and emotional intelligence, I would suggest that all schools need to teach ethical intelligence - a much deeper application of emotional intelligence, but in the context of improving the situation around us rather than just understanding it.

And this gets to the heart of why a charity focus is so important. Charity is not meant to be insincere so to be showy, as per many a televised charity session from decades ago. Nor should it be for an ego boost or to gain more social media followers.

Charity is about creating a sense of appreciation of who we are and what we have, applying the empathy and understanding for those who would benefit from the help and support, and making the effort and commitment in forging the human connection that binds us all. 

The disparities in so many aspects of our lives can begin to be bridged with the future generations embracing this mindset. At Al Salam Community School, charity will become a duty for all, which will run through the DNA and essence of our school community. 

Charity begins at school.

Kausor Amin-Ali is principal of Al Salam Community School, Dubai