Picture the scene…in exactly 80 days it will be the 25 December: the turkey, the decorations, the presents…..and Wizard singing, ‘I wish it could be Christmas everyday….’
If I’m completely honest, by Christmas Day I am normally quite glad the build-up is over and that it is NOT Christmas every day – that all the obscure perfume ads are replaced with the promise of warm holidays in the coming months….yet, something tells me that this year might just be somewhat different. So, rather than imagining a sandy August beach holiday, my post-Christmas world will be jammed with me watching my favourite Christmas movies, starting – somewhat appropriately in a COVID world – with Groundhog Day.
“What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same…?” Thus, asks the central character of the movie, famously played by Bill Murray. The simple premise of the movie? A weatherman is frustratingly sent to cover a story about a weather-predicting rat and discovers that he awakes on Groundhog Day realising that he now spends his life in a perpetual loop where people do the same thing EVERY day.
Does this sound familiar?
Bubbles, socially distanced queues, hand sanitisers in and out of buildings, cleaning the tables, textbooks, board pens, whiteboard, chairs, lab coats, door handles…..and then at the end of the day – akin to the pure joy of changing from skinny jeans to yoga pants – a sigh of pure relief that we have survived. We have made it. Euphoric. Almost like the end of term.
And then it’s Tuesday. Now, where did l leave that spray bottle of detergent?
A COVID School is an amazing place: teachers continually excel in their classrooms whilst constantly aware of the professional tinnitus that at the blink of an eye – or a new continuous cough – this outstanding teaching must all go virtual. Ingenuity and innovation abound: cross-curricular virtual lectures on the simple penalty kick incorporates the history of football, the anatomy and physiology of the human body, the biomechanics of the ankle, the intricacies of VAR and the psychology of the penalty taker. Virtual tours and parents’ evenings are now part of the marketing toolbox and open opportunities for increased attendance at events that has been, hitherto, impossible for some. Students that are away from school for whatever reason are now linked into their learning via Teams and miss nothing significant – and don’t even get me started on the death of Snow Days!
The silver lining to this pandemic cloud is agility: to think differently, to purposefully re-define ‘limitations’ as ‘opportunities’, to not bemoan the negatives of the internet and the over-use of screen time but rather acclaim their use as the way to stay connected and – for many schools – even stay alive. My own school, its leadership team and every member of teaching and non-teaching staff are constantly re-evaluating how, what and to whom they are communicating and spend their planning and teaching time balancing their face-to-face contact with those inside the school building whilst simultaneously imagining what this will be like for those who will be one dimensional on a screen – fully present in spirit.
It will not last forever – nothing ever does – but as the leader of my own school I must recognise the emotional impact that this has on members of my own community. Education is a vocation and, like any vocation, demands a huge part of ourselves. I define myself as a husband, a father and a teacher since none of these can be truly separated from my own, personal identity and I am confident that members of my own school community also feel the same. The demands are considerable and add to this the uncertainty of our current situation, it is not surprising that the emotional drain is considerable. This has been a term like no other and if the ‘COVID-coaster’ is now part of our lexicon, I often feel that I don’t even meet the height requirement to get onto the ride, let alone ride it again and again.
Yet we do.
Each day our community musters the courage to simply carry on. This is not the stereotypical courage – the type you find as a meme with roaring lions. No, this is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow’, whether it be Groundhog Day or not. I know that – as in the film – each day seems a repeat of the last but we are not without hope and stand firmly with people who care and who want to make a difference to the lives of our young. This period of time is another step in the cycle of life and if it means that we do live a current Groundhog Day and if it means that I get the opportunity to plan and teach with staff that care deeply, then that is a gift in my book and – perhaps – every day COULD be just like Christmas…..
