It’s the end of the half-term
break from schools. It was a break I
went into thinking I might get halfway through and decide I’d just as well be
at work and it has been a strange break, taking place during the third national
lockdown, with the ‘stay at home’ rule in force, limiting the places to go,
things to do and people to see. February
half-term can often be a bit like that, however; cold, dark, grey winter days are
not very enticing and I often find myself enjoying this week for lazy, cosy indoors
days, watching films, reading, writing a little, listening to music.
Now it’s time to look forward to returning
to school for the second half of the school year but in these times of
uncertainty, we don’t really know what it is that we’re looking forward to. Across the country, school has been closed to
most children since Christmas and most of them have only seen one full term of ‘normal’
school since last spring. There’s optimism
that schools in England will re-open to more children in a couple of weeks’
time, but this lockdown has been marked by the Prime Minister’s caution too and
knowledge that there won’t be a rush back to normality as there was after last
year’s lockdowns. There’s not yet any knowing
how many students I will have in my classroom in the coming weeks.
I teach in a special school where
I have a small class of five teenaged boys, all of whom have a diagnosis of
autism. Since Christmas, only one of my
class has attended school; the other four have remained at home although they had
the option to return – my school decided (rightly in my opinion) to re-open in
January to as many families as wanted to send their children. There was a view, I believe, that all children
at our school are vulnerable because of their individual needs, and an acceptance
that for many of them and their families, their emotional well-being was enhanced
by their being at school rather than at home.
What I failed to acknowledge at
the start of term was the capacity of my boys to make up their own minds, so I
didn’t anticipate their own decision to stay at home. They are all what we refer to as ‘high-functioning’
young men with a version of autism that is often referred to as Asperger’s, so
they have the same capacity for learning as neurotypical young people and
similar understanding of the world around them.
They themselves therefore have good understanding of what coronavirus is
and its consequences; they follow the news; they know that students their age
in other schools are staying at home and they have their own perceptions of the
risks of returning to school, and some of them are fearful. None of them attended school between the end
of March and September last year so they have memories of that too – they coped
with that lockdown and they and their families stayed safe. Moreover, the costs of missing out on
classroom learning, which are hard for them to grasp, were outweighed by the
benefits to a young person with autism of staying at home without the pressures
and anxieties of being at school with all its unpredictables, and of being able
to indulge in their special interests as much as they liked. I have complete respect for the decision they
each took.
Like most classrooms, mine has
been an odd place to be in the past couple of months but we’ve adapted well. I spend two to three hours each morning
delivering live lessons via Zoom – English or Maths each day and usually one other
subject – Careers, PSHE, History, Science, French and Geography are delivered in
this way, following our normal curriculum.
Some of these lessons are for everyone, with the one student in the
classroom joining the others in their bedrooms via Zoom, whilst some are for
smaller groups or one-to-one. At first,
I hated the prospect of teaching in this way, but I quickly got used to it and
have even taken to it well. The occasional
technical glitch aside (and thankfully, they are rare), I’ve been surprised by
how much we have achieved and by the levels of students’ engagement – attendance-rates
are high and they participate well.
I e-mail follow-up work for those
at home to complete together with work for the other subjects that we don’t do ‘live’. I get some work e-mailed back to me – more from
some students than others – but frustratingly, the quality of what they send me
is nowhere near what they would achieve in the classroom. They’ve certainly missed out on the support
they’d get at school – the glance over their shoulder at the work they’re doing;
the encouragement; the feedback, tips and advice; the expectation; and the praise. I mark their work, scan it and send it back
to them with my feedback; I’m not sure they read it and take it on board, but it’s
the best I can do.
The student attending school has had
a great time, probably valuing school more than ever. A teaching assistant supports him so the
one-to-one attention and support he is receiving is intensive and sensitive,
and for him, the unpredictables that usually come with a fuller classroom have
been removed. His response has been
phenomenal. He is more relaxed and engaging
so both my TA and I have been able to develop our relationship with him. Most significantly, he has shown far more
interest in his learning, spending much longer on activities than previously, producing
far more work of a higher quality than ever before and making leaps and bounds
in progress. Him mum has commented that
ironically, this has been the best year for him academically, and it’s been a
real joy to share it with him. Now we’re
wondering what we can learn and take from it.
It’s important, I think, to recognise the positive outcomes of the
circumstances in which we find ourselves, as well as the challenges.
For all the boys and their
families, there are huge positives. They’re
probably not unlike most teenagers in relishing being able to set their own
routine, including staying in bed for longer and spending more time gaming and
watching YouTube, and I’m not so naïve as to think this wasn’t part of the
motivation for their decision to stay at home!
They’ve also openly told me that they’re living their best life by being
at home on their own and one or two parents have told me of how much more at
ease their sons seem – that’s a reflection of their autism. For all that though, I’m certain they
appreciate the routine that live Zoom lessons and schoolwork provides – they
show up and engage well, after all.
Of course, there have been
challenges. Parents can’t be superheroes,
supporting all their children with their schoolwork, and some quickly became
lost and frustrated and, as one put it, felt like they were going mad. Some of my students had to share devices with
their siblings, all trying to access their own lessons at different times. It emerged that some were attempting Zoom-learning
and completing their work on a small and even cracked smartphone screen, which
must have been nigh-on impossible. They
(and more often their parents) don’t always have the technical confidence to access
what they need online and parents often don’t have the knowledge or confidence
to support their son’s learning. We
weren’t geared up for home-learning last year but now we’ve learnt a lot. Last year, I only delivered one Zoom session
each week, in contrast to at least two hours per day in these last two months. Now, we’ve been able to provide students with
a laptop if they didn’t have one. We’ve
realised how much more we could achieve, the consequences of failing and as our
expectations have grown, our young people have risen to meet them.
For my part, I truly believe that
work has kept me going through these dark times. I live on my own so lockdown alone at home in
the depths of winter would have been hard and I’m not great at working from home
– I’ve realised how much motivation I derive from having other busy people
around me – so that would have been challenging too. I feel lucky that my daily routine has hardly
changed since the start of this lockdown in January, to have had continuing
human contact at school and the opportunity to work hard and be possibly busier
than ever. The days and weeks of this lockdown
have flown by.
I’m very conscious that it’s been
very different for many other teachers.
Returning to the workplace while infection rates were high could be
frightening; colleagues have been anxious for themselves and about inadvertently
taking the virus home with them to infect their families. There’s been concern about children left at
home because their own school is shut while mum or dad return to do their job. I’ve relished the challenge of managing home-learning
alongside classroom-based learning. Despite
my small class and the support of a teaching assistant, it comes with its own issues
when your students all have special educational needs, but understandably,
others have found it more challenging, with bigger classes, uncooperative learners,
demanding parents, safeguarding concerns, too much pressure from above and not
enough support. While work has thankfully
kept me going, it’s been really tough on some of my colleagues. Covid has been good for empathy, I think.
I’m glad to be at work and I’m keeping
my fingers crossed for a swift and successful return to school for all children
and young people in a couple of weeks.
There will be some who disagree with me and feel that it’s too soon to
re-open schools, but children need to be in school – they’re missing out on far
too much education and too many personal and social opportunities while they’re
at home – and we teachers have an important job to do. This emergency has given me more appreciation
of the value of work for my own well-being and a greater sense of the purpose
and worth that my work provides. I like
to imagine that some of the doctors, nurses and scientists who are our Covid
heroes credit their own teachers with getting them where they are now and I like
to think about the children sitting in front of their laptop for their Zoom
lessons or in their Covid-secure classroom bubbles today who will go on to
become the doctors, nurses and scientists of tomorrow, thanks in no small part
to the efforts of their teachers.
I’ve never been prouder to be a
teacher.
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