Seán Twomey: The start of this school year, let's give each other some space

Without seeing each other's faces and the fun parts of school, will we be reverting back to the factory model of education, asks Seán Twomey, principal of St Aloysius’ College, Carrigtwohill, Co  Cork

We are asking students to come back to school wearing a mask every time they are inside 2m of another person

Schools have been frantic places for the past month, getting ready to try and implement the new Covid-19 requirements and ensure physical distancing within classrooms. It has been a huge challenge for many secondary schools.

In our school it has meant ripping our timetable apart and rebuilding it with split breaks and lunchtimes, removing over 800 lockers and double desks into storage, installing sanitisation units in all rooms, and planning different drop zones in the morning for year groups and one-way systems on stairs and corridors. We have had to source additional classroom accommodation and extra rooms and we have cleared out a frankly incredible amount of materials and furniture and, sadly, lots of books.

Every teacher has been in our school over the past two weeks to help and anybody who doubts teachers’ willingness to get back to their students need only look at the huge efforts being put in by so many schools to ensure we reopen safely.

Personally, without the support of my deputy principals, staff, and family I would probably have broken down by now. Such a purge of so many years of student work has been emotional for teachers and once vibrant learning spaces are now bare.

It has been an extremely stressful month for school leaders as the pressure and responsibility for opening safely is being laid squarely on the shoulders of school management.

I have had many sleepless nights worrying about whether we are properly prepared. A large part of this is the fact there are so many different actions being taken in different schools, when I hear about schools taking out sinks, installing a perspex wall down their corridor, or building a perspex teaching box in classrooms, it is only natural to think ‘Should I be doing that?’

Despite all the stress, I have been looking forward to getting our students back into St Al’s because they are the reason that we exist as teachers — without students, there is no school.

However, I know that we have many in our community worried about what lies ahead. Some students and staff will have their own health issues and some will have family members they are concerned about.

School is normally seen as an extremely safe environment but now there are doubts about this and it is up to all of us in schools to try and reassure and recreate a safe space. I am sure some parents and students will adopt a wait-and-see approach.

Many teachers, in particular, feel that they are being used as guinea pigs in a social and scientific experiment.

Indeed, with the sad news of Ken Robinson’s passing over the weekend, there are probably more than a few reminded of his views that modern education systems are rooted in the era of the industrial revolution. Those early school systems were designed to care for the children of the factory workers to allow them to go and do their jobs and as such were created to run along factory lines.

I was vividly reminded of this in a different way when out shopping for school shoes with my younger daughter last Saturday. I came across a poster portraying a celebratory mum looking like she had just won the lottery with the tagline ‘Everything to get them Back to School (and you back to normality).

I know it was meant to be humorous but most humour has a grain of truth and it made me wonder, if that is really what getting students back to school is for, then what does it say about our society? I imagine teachers putting their health at risk to bring students back into school would be annoyed about this message.

As we get closer to opening, I am beginning to really worry about what it is going to be like for students. With only hours to go, I, as a school principal, am still unclear about what we can or cannot do in our school.

Take physical education. Last week’s NPHET guidelines were a maximum of six people training indoors and 15 people outdoors. Class sizes in all
secondary schools are around 24-26. Does this mean that PE cannot proceed at all? Does this mean that after school extra-curricular activities cannot happen?

Apparently singing is also banned indoors, what does this mean for choir and music? These are part of our wellbeing hours, it’s widely known that music and movement help improve mental health.

This week one school was castigated for having an assembly of all their First Years in one area. The reality is if it was raining, they would all likely have been in one indoor area at lunchtime anyway.

While at the shops, like everyone else I wore a mask for the few hours I was there. I could not help but think about what will this be like for our students. Consider this, under the guidelines we are asking students to stay in one room all day (other than for option subjects). In addition, they are advised not to move around the room. We are also asking them to come back to school wearing a mask every time they are within 2m of another person.

I am taking it that almost every school will have desks placed 1m apart as instructed for physical distancing so that means almost all secondary students will have to wear a mask for at least six hours a day. On days when it will rain this will most likely rise to seven hours.

Now consider also the challenges this will be for new students. Our facial expressions are a primary means of communicating with one another, they convey our emotional state. When we
want to welcome and reassure someone, we smile. When something is bothering us, we look sad. How are students going to communicate with each other? How will teachers communicate with students — teaching, after all, is an expressive profession.

For that matter, how will we even recognise students behind a mask? If a face visor does for waiting staff on a six-hour shift, why not allow them for a student?

We have been so busy getting ready to open our schools, I worry that we have forgotten to think about what they will be like for students and staff to come into. Without seeing each other’s faces and without all the fun parts of education, will we be reverting back to the factory model of learning? I certainly hope not. It would be a shame to see the changes made in the last 20 years lost and I think that we will need to bring the creative thinking advocated for by Ken Robinson into the classrooms of 2020-21.

We can only wait and see and that is the reason why with schools opening this week, I am sincerely hoping we can all give each other space and time to settle into this new reality, not
just physical space but also breathing space.

Seán Twomey is principal of St Aloysius’ College, Carrigtwohill, Co  Cork

This story has been amended after publication