I’ve never known anything like it and I’ve been involved in education as a learner, teacher or adviser since September 1964!
September 2020 will begin an extremely unusual academic year. Covid 19 has wreaked havoc with our education system and daily lives. So how can education communities prepare for the new academic year approaches?
My work aims to help people identify and fulfil their potential and I am very concerned that Covid 19 may be stopping this. As young people return to schools in September, I am wondering how people including me, committed to supporting successful transition, can help. While searching for tools to help I learnt about the Recovery Curriculum and strongly encourage all educationalists (and potentially employers) to find out about this and to consider how they can cuse it.
Barry Carpenter wrote the Recovery Curriculum as a Think Piece in March. He identifies 5 losses that happened in lockdown. He then writes of these 5 losses ‘loss of routine, structure, friendship, opportunity and freedom, can trigger the emergence emotionally of anxiety, trauma and bereavement in any child. The overall impact cannot be underestimated. It will cause a rapid erosion of the mental health state in our children.’
2020 experience
Barry made me think about how I’ve been feeling. In March, I nearly got stuck in a foreign country whilst on the holiday. Fortunately, I managed to get home. Scary though, even in New Zealand. Once home I chose to self-isolate having had one of the weirdest journeys of my life by car, plane, train and bus from an oddly empty hotel in Auckland to my home in Lincoln.
Once back friends and family delivered shopping but, like so many others, we couldn’t meet anyone and were bombarded with information of awful deaths and fears for the collapse of the NHS, whilst stuck at home not knowing quite what to do. Fortunately, I didn’t get any Covid Symptoms and was soon working hard from home, often on new media platforms, to ensure our small education support business operated. Training and meetings, amongst other things, rapidly moved online requiring a new and challenging skill set.
Life was not normal or very pleasant. No nights out with friends, no concerts, exercise classes or beauty treatments and no chance of the flying experience my 60th birthday present. At home like so many people everything felt out of my control. Information and statistics were regularly released but it seemed unclear what they were telling us, apart from we were at risk, to greater or lesser extent, of a very nasty virus and many people in the UK and elsewhere were being killed by it.
The Younger Generation
How must young people have been feeling? No need to get up and go to school, maybe good to begin with for some? Mum and Dad trying to teach you at home; or maybe not depending on their work and attitude. No longer able to meet friends and grandparents; visit cinemas or parks; play, hang out or sleepover with your mates.
For some teenagers suddenly no exams to study for, final revision efforts no longer possible as school, college and in some cases University exams were cancelled. Lockdown also meant little freedom and while the novelty of being at home with siblings and not going to school may have initially appealed, the downsides including risk of the disease, shortages, no social contact and the potential threat to life of self and loved ones no doubt soon had many unsettled.
Some schools continued to provide some learners with some education; but things have changed. September 2020 is not comparable in many ways to September 2019. Learning has been missed and potentially forgotten, trust in people and routines may have been destroyed and individuals may have changed significantly for a variety of reasons.
So, what is your plan? – What should it be? – What can it be?
Many Head Teachers and others are concerned that ‘children will be so far behind academically when they return’, but like Barry Carpenter, and others involved with the Recovery Curriculum, I believe there are much more important issues than academic progress.
Barry identifies 5 levers on which to build the Recovery Curriculum ‘as a systematic, relationship -based approach to reigniting the flame of learning in each child’. His levers in my words are:
- Relationships – how can these be rebuilt and developed in schools?
- Community – what effect will learning at home have had for different learners? How will they readjust to the school community?
- Transparent Curriculum – how can we ensure we use student voice to help students ‘catch up’ and deal with their loss?
- Metacognition – ensuring the skills for school learning are explicit and helping learners reskill and build their confidence for learning in the school environment or changing it?
- Space – to be or to re/discover who they are, their individual and group voice and to provide opportunities and support without overwhelming them with pressure and expectation.
As a Career Education Consultant, I don’t work directly with young people. I support career programmes, Career Leaders and their organisations to ‘empower people to make successful transition’. As September 2020 approaches, I see a new element to my role; to support the transition of learners back into education. Education that engages, motives and supports them to fulfil their potential. I believe the Recovery Curriculum should be a key part of this.
Your Recovery Curriculum?
Before writing this, I spent time on the internet and was heartened to see, on a moving banner across their website, the OSSMA (Ormiston Sir Stanley Matthews Academy) Recovery Curriculum 2020. They have chosen, for their learners, to identify six key core values: kindness, resilience, empathy, challenge, confidence and enthusiasm. I wish Miss Thompson, the Assistant Principal and all the staff the very best in their endeavours to use their Recovery Curriculum to support learners. As we approach this extremely unusual September, I am reassured it will be a positive one at OSSMA. I hope many more young people will benefit from similar initiatives not just lots of extra English, Maths and Science!
What do you think?
More information can be found on the Recovery Curriculum at the links below
https://barrycarpentereducation.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/loss-and-recovery-think-piece-1.pdf
Possible Mental Health support for your organisation from https://red-umbrella.co.uk/
About the author Janet Hutchinson MA PGCE MA at https://complete-careers.com/