Page 7 - St Andrews Prep Androvian 2019-20

LOCKDOWN
Zoom,Teams, Padlet, furloughing, social distancing, bubbles, the R rate,‘a new normal’ and ‘a phased return’ – words and phrases we all understand now but back in January would have left us scratching our heads in confusion.
Who would have thought back then that we would come to the end of the summer term with only a fraction of our children in school and with teachers delivering their lessons from their own homes? This has been a challenging period for all schools but as former St Andrew’s Headmaster Hugh Davies-Jones said after viewing our Vir tual Speech Day video, “When the chips are down, the St Andrew’s community can pull together to produce outstanding and imaginative results.” That is exactly what has happened.
The final week of the spring term was where it all began: pupil numbers in school dwindled through the week as the fear and confusion over the pandemic grew. Gradually more and more events were cancelled as they would not fit in with new regulations and, in fact, the Thursday afternoon discos represented a metaphorical ‘slow dance at the end of the night’. Term petered out with only a few remaining through to the end!
The Easter holidays never really happened as the school provided childcare
for the children of key workers and teachers set about preparations for a remote learning programme.Timetables and medium term plans were re-written, lessons were adapted to a new online format, staff understanding of Teams, Zoom and Class Notebook was fast-tracked through hastily created help videos and there were numerous online discussions among staff eager to share ideas and find out more. It was a new and daunting territory for everyone but there was a healthy recognition that parents and pupils were feeling anxious too and so an underlying principle was to have as much teacher: pupil interactivity as was possible and appropriate.We knew it was impractical and unrealistic to try to replicate a live lesson from home but we also knew that everyone would be reassured by seeing their form teachers, tutors and teachers as regularly as possible.The ‘human touch’, even remotely, was going to be key.
At 9am on Wednesday 15 April, questions raged in my mind as the first Headmaster’s Daily Update went “live”: would the technology cope with vast numbers accessing the same site at the same time? What would we do if it did not? Do they know how to access Padlet (the online noticeboard)? Will the teachers remember to ‘register’ the children? Will they know how to respond to technical issues? Will the parents be happy? What if a child doesn’t have a device? Would we have to go back to the drawing board on Day One?
I will remember that I joined the school for the summer term of Year 8 but I never actually set foot into it; but I have made lots of new friends and got to know lots of teachers who I have not met either! Everybody was really welcoming.
LOCKDOWN | 5
Angelina, Year 8 Joiner for the summer term