View

Our Year 10 boarder, Alice, shares her experience of learning at St Mary's Cambridge, in Hong Kong!

Our Year 10 boarder, Alice, shares her experience of learning at St Mary's Cambridge, in Hong Kong!

Lockdown has meant we are not together as a community and many of our students are now learning from their home country. We hear from Alice in Year 10 who is one of these, and is learning from her home in Hong Kong:

Although the UK may be in lockdown, where I am currently in Hong Kong, things are going towards a new settled normal. Restrictions are still in place e.g no more than two people at one table in restaurants, restaurants have a curfew at 6pm.

Learning from a completely different continent, thousands of miles away from everyone else feels surreal. Even though school is online, whenever I’m in an online lesson it’s as if I’m back in the classroom; technical difficulties sometimes get in the way, I know that all my teachers understand and that lessons are adjusted so that no learning is compromised.

Compared to online learning in the summer term, there have been many improvements since. Many new functions allow online lessons to be even more like in-person lessons for example the break-out rooms mimic group conversations. Also, an improvement to summer term is that now we know how teams work everything runs much smoother without much fault. 

When lessons begin, it’s as if I’m in a different world. Learning becomes the most important thing and the worst that could happen is being disconnected from the meeting or not being able to hear the teacher. During the 45 minutes of class time, my teachers show me a world of unknown knowledge in which I would learn to understand.

Even though I am not physically in school, all my teachers have made it clear that I can still ask them for any help with anything that I don't understand. 

Being able to learn in such unpredictable times is a privilege and school has become the highlight of my day. 

Alice, Year 10 Boarder