Are you ready to return to home schooling?
Don’t worry if the answer is not an excited ‘Yes!’, because it really has been a challenging couple of months for many of the Garran families, hasn’t it?
We are still looking at three to four weeks of remote learning. Remember there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. See the News page for details on when the children return to school. It’s a staggered return based on year-group needs, and following health and safety rules.
You may relate to this story:
Once upon a spring time, a mother awakes to the sounds of the birds singing. She has no time to apply make-up or to do her morning yoga.
She needs to get her three children set-up and sorted for another day of home school. The difference with the holidays is that she has felt less pressure to be everything for everyone for two weeks.
The mother shuffles through the kitchen and greets her husband, who woke up two hours earlier so he could get some work done before he locks himself in the study for back-to-back video calls. He doesn’t even come out for lunch some days when he’s really busy.
For this family, this is lockdown. And it’s been the same juggle for weeks.
The mother logs-on and checks into work, glancing over her tasks and emails. At the same time she prepares breakfast for the children. She decides in this moment that the eldest child can prepare lunch today, and that maybe her husband can prepare dinner. She looks in the cupboard. Not much food left. A supermarket trip is needed tomorrow. She will go extra early in the morning, while the children still sleep and when there are less people.
She glances at the pile of worksheets: ‘What is a modality word?’ she screams inside her head, and then whispers aloud to herself – “-how am I supposed to teach this, when I don’t know it myself?”. She knows the answer to this question, does that make it rhetorical?
She sips her coffee and for a moment everything feels okay, and after another couple of sips she has a bit more energy.
FAST FORWARD … and another day is nearly done.
It has been chaotic and she is frazzled by early evening. She is behind her deadlines for work, even though she managed an hour whilst her husband made a curry dish with the help of their youngest child.
She is tired, yet has some strange energy that needs to go somewhere… She decides to go for a walk around the suburb after dinner. By this time, she knows every inch of Garran and whilst she loves it, she is also a bit bored of it.
She sees a colourful bird… it reminds her of hope, of freely moving forward, and the near end to the lockdown: It reminds her that life goes on, it reminds her to be grateful.
She turns around to see her husband, sons and daughter running towards her, shouting “wait for us!”
And she smiles, her heart warms. She takes a deep breath, and knows everything is just the way it is meant to be. The end.
Some of you may relate to this story, or parts of it.
Maybe the mother of this story has a glass of wine in the evening, or a long soak in the bath, or maybe she continues with family tasks. However it ends, it is the moments that we grab in-between that count.
Our Garran families are all different, and we have different challenges during this time, but we need to ensure a moment of grounding, and gratitude: A moment of understanding, and acceptance! We can do this when we take a moment to breathe.
Check these tips for returning to home schooling in Term 4.
Please make sure you read the Terms and Privacy Policies on the website.
Garran P and C 