The past three days have been a long blur of lessons, reworking content for online classes, creating new content, drawing trees, shifting lessons, study, cooking, and headaches. I wake up at night worrying, not about myself, but about our boys and the little ones I tutor. I worry about teenagers, but that is a different post.
My growing worry is for my young students. Some are managing well, enjoying the peace and quiet, working at their own pace and away from the spotlight of the classroom. Others are overwhelmed by the lack of structure, guidance, support, teacher-pupil interaction, and of course, their friends.
The light at the end of the tunnel is hardly a glimmer for many of these kids. Even as adults, rationalising when, if ever, we may go back to some modicum of normalcy, is challenging; so, how on earth we expect our kids, young and teenage to manage, beats me. Every time we take a step forward, some chaotic event occurs, and we step back even further. One fact that we have to accept is that home-based learning - not homeschooling, will be part of our children's education for some time to come, and probably part of the blended-learning future of education.
So what do we do for kids who need more support, and that is not merely an academic question. There is anxiety, fear, lack of confidence, panic, introversion, extroversion, frustration and despair. What is the point of school and learning? What is the point of a teacher? But there is a point. There is a point that echoes Paolo Friere's notion of education as a cultural action. Children, students, learners are not receptacles of information being poured down their throat.
As educators or teachers, it is our responsibility to provide children with a strong foundation for learning, to help them understand what that foundation provides, and why they need it. We have an obligation to nurture inquiry, curiosity, creating scaffolding and nurture that will enable all children, those without confidence, with anxiety, with learning challenges to shine, and prove their brilliance, just as those with confidence.
But, for now, it is so painful. Our kids, our students, my students, struggle, and breakdown. They are rudderless, directionless, what does life mean any more? As parents, we cannot pour guilt over ourselves, when home-learning breaks down, when our child slips behind. Parents send their children to school because they are not educators in the traditional sense. So, I beg anyone who reads this, to not compare, contrast or blame. Anyone who boasts how well they are managing and how wonderfully it is all turning out, is from another planet.
We are not functioning in a familiar and what was previously, a natural environment (even if I am weird and enjoying the solitude). Having raised two boys with Dyslexia and Dyspraxia, one of whom struggles with hypersensitivity to noise, I witnessed and felt, even before the pandemic unfurled, their challenges, their frustrations at being understood or helped. I sat with them during meltdowns - not from anger, but from despair; I just held their hand, let them vent, talk, cry or sleep.
For those who think the sun will be out tomorrow, that there will be a vaccine and everything will be a "happy-ever-after" - those who are at the extreme of not believing they need to compromise and do things differently, please, stop being stupid Annie people.
The majority of us, believe it or not, are at the bottom or in the middle, trying to tell our kids, our teenagers and ourselves that we have to pick ourselves up and survive. We have to remind ourselves to rethink how we do things, how we will be with our friends, even family.
This is not going to be the first pandemic, there will be more because the few don't get it and spoil it for the rest.
Humans have adapted, changed and survived over centuries. We have also struggled, cried, screamed and had meltdowns. If we don't do all of that, then we are not human and we are not sensitive. Not sure where I am going with this, but I suppose I am trying to say that expressions of grief, frustration or need manifest in a myriad of ways. That is what makes us unique.
I return to the topic, children. Children need social interaction, they need continual input and exchange with those of their own age as well as those who give them security and structure. So, hold your children, let them shout, let them scream, let them cry. Each one needs to vent, if they cannot run outside, then our presence and the security that brings is one of the best therapies we can offer them. Demonstrate empathy, show how you are adapting and trying. You are your children's gods, their role models, their beacons.
If there is one thing the developmental psychology course I am studying with my eldest son, it is that security in the form of comfort and love whenever it is needed is what underpins everything.
This is a lesson in survival for all of us, and academic learning is no longer the holy grail of success. What we do now, is for the future of all. Our dedication is what will help us survive and be the role models that are needed for our kids. Role models that are needed now, more than at any other time.
That is why I did not go out for a run today.
I stayed at home and make pancakes for breakfast.