Page 10 - Herioter 2021

SEPTEMBER

The beauty case in March – the school was not an island.
The number of Covid-19 cases in Scotland was
beginning to accelerate following the relative
of normal freedom of summer, but there was, as yet, no
direct impact on school attendance.
As far as possible, year groups were bubbled:
refectory sittings were staggered; Junior
School years were allocated different parts of
Normality: a state of being taken for granted that the playground and lawns; pupils re-entering
we now craved. Greyfriars first had to sanitise their hands. In the
With no trips, visits, sporting fixtures or external
speakers, September would be uncharacteristic, Senior School, desks – sanitised at the start and
end of lessons – were necessarily rearranged to
but the rhythm of school brought its own resemble exam halls, with pupils all facing in the
normality: assemblies (delivered via Teams), same direction; windows and doors were kept
timetabled lessons, break and lunch times, open to improve airflow; teachers met virtually
homework. rather than in person.
That sense of normality was symbolised by a
Masks – worn by adults and Senior School pupils
familiar sight: that of the new P1 cohort trooping in corridors and communal areas where physical
outside and setting up a base in the playground. distancing is difficult to maintain – was perhaps
With paper, a clipboard and a pen, as part
of their learning about the school’s founder, the most physically obvious challenge to the norm.
Even then, it was remarkable how something so
they drew the grey walls and turrets of the Old abnormal quickly became accepted, as if the mask
Building, unaware that they were looking up to was merely another item on the uniform list.
classroom windows that one day, in 13 years’ It sounds rather dystopian, but we had lived
time, they will sit on the other side of. through the alternative – remote learning – and
They – and we – can only wonder what the
world might look like at that point, at the start of any amount of sanitising, mask-wearing and social
distancing was preferable to that.
the 2032/33 session when they are in S6. And so, as the pupils got on with the business
The backdrop to whatever state of normality
Heriot’s sought to achieve was, of course, a global of learning, we were reminded of the core reason
why we exist: to teach and to learn.
pandemic.
It had not gone away, and – as had been the
Mr Jonny Muir
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