Before school resumed on 29 April, the class teachers in my school contacted the parents of every child in their class, to determine whether that child would be returning to school under Alert Level 3.
The principal then called each of those families and explained the restrictions for schools under Level 3. She discussed the risks for the child and their home bubble through the expanded contact with new people. She asked parents to please prepare their child for the differences: a different teacher, a different classroom, different school work, a restricted play area and lots of new rules around hygiene and social distancing.
When that was complete and numbers were finalized, the principal was able to assign staffing. She called each staff member involved to explain the plan and check that they were okay with it.
So Wednesday 29 April dawned. We knew in advance that there would only be 9 children coming back to school. That meant one bubble with one teacher. Also on site at school were the principal, the deputy principal, the property manager, one of our office ladies and our attendance/pastoral care lady. My main role was to support the bubble teacher, especially with any specialized learning needs, and to supervise the children during their 2 break times.
Our students arrived 1 by 1 in cars with a parent, who had to remain in the vehicle. They said their goodbyes and where escorted to their bubble classroom by one of the adults on site. While I felt quite calm going to the school on Wednesday morning, there was a little niggle of uncertainty in the back of my mind about how everything would go. I wasn’t the only one as the children and parents were obviously nervous too.
I needn’t have worried. Due to thorough planning and an amazing team of humans on site, everything went without a hitch. It must have been incredibly difficult for the children to maintain their social distance especially during the play times, but they did amazingly well with very few reminders needed.
I had a great day but my unconcious low grade anxiety had obviously had more affect than I realised. When I got home, I crashed into my lazyboy chair, put my feet up and was asleep within 15 minutes. Hahaha.
Early on in the piece, the leadership of New Zealand acknowledged that many of our families would not be able to access online learning for a variety of reasons. For this reason the Ministry of education ordered thousands of laptops and chromebooks to be distributed and home learning packages were devised to be posted out to families. Additionally two TV learning channels were created, as most families do have a television in New Zealand. What a wonderful and quick response to the unprecedented crisis situation… in theory.
As often happens with the best laid plans, things didn’t work out quite as they should. Because of the current state of the world – the pandemic leading to widespread national lockdowns – and the limited number of people working, there have been hold ups with the laptop orders and many families have not received their home learning packages. As of Wednesday, no one in our school community had recieved their package of work from MOE. Once again, our school leadership team scrambled to devise our own version of home learning booklets covering a range of subjects across each year level.
With the exception of our bubble teacher, all the rest of our classroom teachers are running online learning programs from their own homes. The only problem with that is that approximately 400 of our 600 students do not have an Internet capable device on which to do their remote learning. So apart from supporting our bubble teacher, I also worked with the rest of the team to photocopy home learning packs and to ensure that the students with additional learning needs received the right level of resources. The relief of getting all the packs ready in just 2 days was almost euphoric.
There were far too many packs to be distributed to homes so we arranged a system staggered according to year level, for families to come and pick up the packs from school.
Friday was distribution day. A steady stream of families turned up, remaining in their car while we noted down the name and level of their student and passed the appropriate pack to them through the car window. A beautiful example of social distancing once again. We all worked together and had music going – it was really fun.
We still have more to distribute on Monday and any day that we need to, to ensure that the students get the resources that they need to continue their learning. This may even mean that we deliver the last few to student homes personally.
What a week! In a word, going back to school felt weird. Here’s a couple more words: the quietness was eerie, so unusual for this place of energy, learning and laughter…. There was also quite a bit of anxiety on day 1 but I needn’t have worried: everything went so smoothly. Getting all the home packages prepared was so full on that we didn’t really have time to worry about anything else and the days went incredibly fast. Friday had a light-hearted feel as our team touched base with families coming to pick up their learning resources and basked in the satisfaction of a job well done. Food for the soul.