Greg Woolford
Education has had to adapt with the COVID-19 crisis and Brimbank is no exception. Greg Woolford is the family school partnerships co-ordinator at Mother of God Primary School, St Theresa’s Primary School and Our Lady’s Primary School. He shared the experience of the three schools following six weeks of remote learning.
School is not what it used to be.
For the past six weeks schools have had to adapt from having classrooms and buildings that welcomed students into them, to a completely new way of teaching.
Schools have called this ‘remote learning’ as it occurs at children’s homes often connecting parents, siblings or other family members to the children’s learning.
This has been a profound challenge to schools, but also brought about a mixture of unexpected, revealing and rewarding insights.
These insights were recently captured by three Brimbank-based catholic primary schools in Ardeer, Albion and Sunshine.
During this time the school leaders caught up online to discuss and share stories of the challenges they faced.
Surprisingly, they saw a real potential to make the six weeks of remote learning a great opportunity for schools to improve and become better educators of children.
Over this time we’ve seen many children who, in class, were shy or often little heard, or children who were easily distracted, show a new and unexpected side to them.
Many of these children have produced significant amounts of school work, shared previously unknown passions for particular areas of interest, or grown personally through the social relationships with family members at home as well as teachers reaching out to them.
We’ve also seen similar growth in teachers.
Where initially many teachers feared children could fall behind in learning, many are now saying they’ve seen unexpected benefits and changes.
A great example of this is where one teacher was moved when a child shared her place of worship in the garden at home, revealing something she would likely never have seen without this opportunity.
With the schools now moving into a phase of welcoming children back, we look forward to hearing from the children and families in helping us use this time in more practical ways that will benefit them in the future.
