At the heart of Te Rito Toi is the understanding that schools need to help students make sense of the present, not just prepare them for the future. After disasters and crises, schools must as a first priority help learners safely explore the changed world in which they live.
Tag: Lockdown
Last year, I spoke with eight school leaders in Melbourne during the lengthy lockdown periods in 2020.ย This researchย showed how the circumstances of uncertainty and disruption to normal modes of practice influenced their work.
Fiona Longmuir explores the challenges associated with leading during Melbourne’s long lockdown in 2020. After reflecting on the responses, she identified how the crisis strengthened their communities, pretty good decision in time (that might need later adjustment) was better than waiting too long, and the feeling of being heard as important as fixing problems.
It is interesting to read this alongside Alma Harris and Michelle Jones’ discussion of school leadership in disruptive times, as well as Simon Breakspear’s discussion of building back better. I also wonder what the responses would be now? Would it be any different?
Adam Osth reflects upon lockdown and the impact that staying home has on our memory. He explains that the link between memory and the context in which it occurs, a theory known asย contextual-binding theory.
As we link more and more memories to the same cues, it becomes harder to find a memory with those cues. This is like a Google search โ itโs easiest to find what youโre looking for if your search term is unique to that particular thing.
Osth explains that the answer is to mix up your routines and surroundings where possible. Also, James Herman explains that the brain can recover:
“If you create for yourself a more enriched environment where you have more possible inputs and interactions and stimuli, then [your brain] will respond to that.”
In other words, as your routine returns to its pre-pandemic state, your brain should too. The stress hormones will recede as vaccinations continue and the anxiety about dying from a new virus (or killing someone else) subsides. And as you venture out into the world again, all the little things that used to make you happy or challenged you in a good way will do so again, helping your brain to repair the lost connections that those behaviors had once built
To be honest, my habit since last year has been to listen to Coronacast each morning.
As the boom is lowered on yet another lockdown, how are we still having the same conversations? Fully 15 months on, how are so many issues unchanged, uncorrected and wildly off-track,ย Virginia Trioli writes.
Having gone out to catch up with friends only the weekend before Melbourne was again thrown into lockdown, I was amazed. Firstly, at the amount of people on public transport without masks and secondly at the man on the door of the bar who thanked me when I signed in. Is this where we have gotten to? It would seem that it is?
Opening up before the spread is crushed doesn’t make economic sense. Because it ignores a key tenet of human behaviour: confidence.
You could open your venue 24 hours a day but if people don’t feel safe and secure in their jobs and income, they won’t walk in and they won’t spend.
The health impact and the economic pain aren’t in competition, they twist together like a vine.
Even down to low numbers, I am still working from home, and for a reason. Confident like trust takes time.
Walked with 9yo to school this morning. Halfway, she decided that was far enough. I started walking home and just turned around to wave goodbye only to find her running up the hill to her school.