Barbreck Update – A lot to be proud of
Only one week to go – the finish-line for the end of Term 3 is in sight! While I know we are all incredibly tired as we move closer to the end of this term, we have much to be proud of. If someone had asked us (teachers, parents and students) last year if we could move to online learning in just a week, learn new systems of lesson delivery, support your child’s learning while you work from home, wear a mask everywhere, be confined to your house unless an essential worker, be a student learning from home while learning new technologies at the same time, have internet issues, find resources around the house to help with your learning, and do this for months – you would be thinking ‘No way!
But this is our reality and we are living it. Despite the steep learning curve and having to adapt quickly, we have grown and succeeded. We even have an expanded vocabulary – hand sanitiser, masks, pandemic, COVID-19, MS Teams, mute, muted, muting, channels, SeeSaw, portal, virtual hand up, chat function, essential/permitted worker and many more.
I encourage everyone, as they look back on this term, to think of the successes, think how we have grown, not from being near the fridge, but by adapting to change, finding a way forward, developing our skills in patience, persistence and resilience, finding our sense of humour when things were tough, working as a team and spreading kindness. While there will be more weeks of online learning for some when Term 4 begins, let us hope that we will all be together soon. Until then, be proud of yourself and others!
There is no substitute for real schools
While many advancements in technology are making life easier and, in some industries, replacing human resources, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that there is much more to schools than bricks and mortar. It is a place of social interactions, all of which are key to students’ learning. These key forms of social interactions shape the basis for the argument that schools cannot be artificially replicated.
While the Barbreck staff have been amazing during these remote learning periods with their delivery of 40 live lessons each week, the staff, parents and most importantly the girls, have noticed it is just not the same. What they missed most was being able to always see the teacher, being able to feel part of the classroom environment, to see the other girls at work, to be able to discuss the work they are learning with others and their teacher, pick up on their non-verbal cues that screen time does not allow, talk, laugh and play with their friends at break times – to be part of a web of interconnected social interactions.
Vygotsky, a psychologist known for his work on psychological development of children, theorises “the fundamental role of social interaction in the development of cognition” (Vygotsky, 1978). He believes “that learning is collaborative, not merely an instruction from teacher to pupil. Children learn best, Vygotsky believed, when working with others and being supported.”
We saw evidence of this theory in action when we saw the girls return to school after the first online learning period. They were so excited to come back to school, to have real interactions with their teachers and friends. You could see the happiness on their faces as they sat in class; many of the little things they had not noticed or valued previously, became so much more important. The teacher passing by, looking over their shoulder as they worked, being called up to the teacher’s desk to show what they had completed, asking questions off to the side of the class, seeing the non-verbal signals teachers give so often during the day that lets them know they are on the right track, that something was amusing, or mistakes had been made – these interactions that happen constantly in a real classroom, are missing when learning online. It is as if a part of the learning is missing and why the girls on returning to School felt so happy- they now had the social interactions they needed.
While advances in technology make life and some aspects of learning better, it cannot provide the warmth and rapport built from human interactions. These interactions form the fabric of teaching and learning found in real schools.
