SO HERE we are in the second week of the school term, and how bizarre and surreal it is. For most of us moving into the new way of things it has been a mixture of stops and starts, half days, getting settled in ‘bubbles’ and much parental anxiety over whether they will be OK or not with the coronavirus still looming over our cities and communities.
Our schools have done an amazing job at trying to keep their staff and students safe. In my children’s schools they have introduced one-way systems, temperature checks on arrival, masks in the corridors, staggered start and finish times and teachers wear visors when in the classroom.
If we as parents are concerned, I’m sure that anxiety is ten-fold in our teaching staff who have to go in to school every day and face hundreds of children knowing that the risk to them of picking up the virus due to the high volume of people they interact with daily is significantly increased just by doing their job. And I don’t think we appreciate them or thank them enough for doing that.
They are brave, strong and determined and are gifting our children – many of whom have had their mental health impacted negatively during lockdown – a sense of much-needed normality and routine.
School is a haven for many children and teachers are extremely special people. When I think back to my own school days and my own teachers I’m in awe of how these people carry on. The Troubles were raging outside our school windows, oftentimes literally, but our teachers had us concentrate on our education, motivating us to keep moving forward regardless and better ourselves.
Just as we remember our schools as a safe haven when we were children, our kids will remember these surreal times and how school, their teachers, their principals and all staff all pulled together to create as safe a space as possible for them to carry on learning in the midst of a global pandemic.
We will have bumps along the road as outbreaks pop up and are dealt with and that is to be expected. But our teachers and our principals have shown great courage and innovation. They have worked extremely hard to allow us all to get back on the road to relative normality – as normal as anything can be in the middle of a global health crisis – and we should all be thankful to them for that.
Our teachers and principals this week have eased our children back into school life, allayed their fears, soothed their worries and got them back on track for learning, growing and thriving.
They have got them excited about the new school year. They have made the transition from primary to post-primary school special for those making that leap. They have focused on making things normal in the most surreal of times. And they have done all this while putting their own no doubt considerable fears and anxieties about coming out of lockdown and into schools to the side.
I think we have all realised the immense impact good teachers have on our children while we navigated the past six months. A lot of us have really struggled with home schooling one or two children. Teachers educate sometimes over 100 pupils a day, keeping them motivated and interested and eager to work.
Teachers shape and mould our children, nurture their talents and bring out the best in them, helping them forge aspirations and future careers. And here they are now standing back in front of a classroom while a pandemic is still ongoing. They are heroes.
