Negative emotion abounds, and understandably so. The constant uncertainty, lockdowns, feelings of anxiety, loneliness and self-isolation are natural emotions experienced by people all around the world.
Many of our students are probably going through far worse with far less life experience:
· Imagine students whose close family members have succumbed to Covid -19.
· Imagine those students whose parents have lost employment and there’s no or limited income.
Follow the herd emotions, and doom and gloom is the default option.
But greatness does not come by being part of the crowd – it is leading it.
The other night, when we asked people attending our Zoom session “how do you feel in this lockdown’, these were the common words people used to describe: “annoyed, boring, hate it, caged, stranded, aimless, and scary”.
And how did we know this?
We introduced a tool called Padlet. This can be found here: www.padlet.com. It requires an email and password. Help the younger students create their emails without actual emails. We literally learnt this a day before the session. The point of this being that we as teachers need to still be engaging with our students and making learning fun.
We are a noble profession.
Fundamentally, we are a truly noble profession that has and still is valued by the community (students see more of us than they do of their parents for a start). Teachers helped mould us to what we are and the generations before. As individuals, we have chosen this profession as our vocation and spent time in educating ourselves.
Isn’t it time we set our aspirations higher, take up the challenge and make a difference to the students we teach? We owe this as our obligation to the next generation if nothing to create better memories for them.
How do we go about this?
As the saying goes ‘if it is to be, it is up to me’. So, let’s start with a small aim; to make ourselves curious to learn and adopt something new. This action alone will help model these learning behaviours with students. After all haven’t we heard that education is about lifelong learning?.
We have assisted mildly by providing you some of the tools to make this difference...use tools such as Zoom, Meets, Padlet, make teaching and learning for students - FUN. Our students still deserve this in the current challenging times when their world is restricted to their home environment.
We have expectations of our political and community leaders but we are also part of that community and are rightly seen as leaders. Leaders provide hope. It is time we rose to the challenge.
· Let’s bring back smiles to their faces.
· Let’s give them hope.
· Let’s add energy back into our and their lives.
· Let’s bring passion back into our teaching.
· Let’s make our teaching and their learning fun.
Remember: if it is to be, it is up to me! We will check in now and again and ask if you have risen to this challenge.
From the Team
Start the learning and mayne fun: Watch this 6 minute video and become an expert in Padlet.