Remote learning - the return...
3 days down, 25 days left until half-term. Me? Counting the Days? What makes you think that? :-) Seriously though, I hope everybody managed to get through last week relatively unscathed?
For those who missed it (and there's always one) let me refresh your memory. School bags packed, uniform washed, ironed and hanging out ready to be put on in the morning. Alarms set, children reminded that they do actually need to get up tomorrow. And, most crucially, parents looking forward to working from home without juggling quite so many humans. Lovely! :-) And then Boris ruined everything!
To be fair, we all suspected (hoped?) it was coming but that doesn't change the fact that a lot of people had to do a great deal of fast, creative thinking during hours when the little grey cells are supposed to be putting their feet up for the day. Whether you were frantically trying to locate yet another spare laptop (because we all have a few stored away just in case, don't we?!) or phoning work to say you needed an extra day's annual leave, whether you were delighted or devastated, I'm going to assume that every single one of you thought "oh no, not again".
I'll draw a veil over Tuesday and move swiftly on to a much brighter second half of the week with a few positives:
1) Our journey to school is now 1 minute, rather than 45 minutes. My daughter has, as she did last Summer, chosen to use this extra time for more music practice.
2) My daughter can become even more independent, easing the transition to Senior School this coming September.
3) My daughter can build her self-confidence by trusting herself to work through a problem alone, rather than automatically asking her parents for help.
We have soon fallen back into the familiar morning routine of logging on to Teams and remembering to check and reply to the email from school. We have restructured our day around snack break and lunchtime. Rather than having a family "playtime" outside in the garden as we did in the summer, we are now all snuggling down on the sofa to read everyday after lunch. I'm having a walk every day during lesson 2 so I still get some "me time" and my daughter is having an enforced 30 minute walk after school every day so she gets some fresh air! Just as the school has done, we have taken the model we created last time and made a few changes to make the best of the situation.
A final thought at the end of a strange week. We are all so incredibly lucky to be part of St Mary's. Tuesday's uplifting messaging from the wonderful Mr O'Reilly certainly made me feel as if we really could do this again. The frustration and sadness about the situation was obvious, but the determination to be positive, inspiring and motivational was as strong as ever.
A huge thank you to every single one of the wonderful team at St Mary's for everything you do for our girls.
Alice D.
Current Y6 Parent