The past two years have been challenging for school students, parents, principals, teaching and school staff as they juggle the ups and downs of remote learning and the lack of social interaction that is a part of daily life on campus.

Canberra Weekly journalist Abbey Halter spoke with some local people experiencing it all first-hand.

Taylor Primary School Principal: Belinda Fenn

For primary aged students, Taylor Primary School Principal Belinda Fenn said remote learning has been a challenge, but the children are generally quite skilled with the technology side of things.

“There was such excitement from the students in the beginning, just it all being something new. I told my teachers to allow that to happen for the first little while, but they’ve all settled in and understand the expectations now,” she said.

“I just think the biggest thing is that they miss each other, and it can be a challenge to get them to engage on an online platform, but I have to say I think children are actually better at it than adults.”

As a parent herself, Ms Fenn said she understands the difficulties of trying to support your children navigate online schooling, especially those at a younger age. She recommends sharing tips with parent communities on how to manage the change.

She said the main priority is that your child is connecting with their teachers and peers to maintain their connection with each other, as that is when the most explicit learning is going to take place.

“Children are very resilient, but we are naturally very social beings, and we can’t mirror the way we would normally interact on an online platform,” she said.

“Our teaching workforce are so skilled and incredibly brave to open up their own homes. I just think it’s admirable; they’re pretty special and doing a remarkable job under the circumstances.”

Ms Fenn said they revamped the previous system Taylor Primary School used last year to make the learning experience more seamless, and that the way they’re delivering teaching online has been very impressive.

They have turned full-sized classes into smaller groups who meet with teachers at least twice a week, as well as an everyday check-in to ensure student-teacher relationships are sustained.

“We work in schools because we love kids and are really missing being with them in-person, but we have complete trust in the advice by ACT Health and welcome the return to school campus when it is safe to do so.”

Parents Bill Huynh and Mei Lau

Bill and Mei are working parents trying to navigate online school with three children, aged 17, 13 and eight, and said their older children are doing alright at the moment, although it’s hard to not be there to check their work.

“The little one we have to push a little bit, but we have the older kids at home who can check on her and we will sometimes facetime them and just sit the phone up and we can see what they’re doing,” Bill said.

“With our little daughter, her teacher is pretty good. We have just told her that we’re working and if there are any problems with her homework or her behaviour, or even if she’s upset with having to be at home a lot, her teacher will contact us straight away,” Mei said.

Bill said they usually have a strict rule where they can’t play their video games during the day, but with lockdown, have allowed them to have two hours a day, as long as their work is finished.

“I tell my son if there’s any complaints from his teacher, rather than bad grades, then he is banned from his games, so it’s more about behaviour right now and he’s pretty cool with that,” Bill said.

“If they’re not learning as much as they would in normal school right now I think it’s okay, they can catch up later. It’s hard times for everyone right now,” Mei said.

They are more concerned with their older child’s grades, who is in Year 11 this year, as they said she needs good grades to get into university.

Bill said the kids have been missing their friends but have been chatting with them online and making sure they keep in touch.

“We’re just playing it week by week, we don’t know how we are going to manage once the older one goes back to school before the younger ones yet, but we want them to be fully vaccinated before they go back to school,” Mei said.

“We’d rather wait until they were fully vaccinated before we send them back, even if they have to wait another couple of weeks,” Bill said.

They both said being a working parent during lockdown is hard, but they’re lucky their older children are responsible and can take care of their youngest one.

Canberra Girls Grammar School principal: Anna Owen

Canberra Girls Grammar School principal Anna Owen said she misses the everyday celebrations you witness whenever you walk through the school and see children playing together and the in-between conversations, because she believes school is much more than just lessons.

“Learning for students of all ages is still very much a social endeavour as they learn from their peers as much as they do from their teachers. So that aspect has meant we needed to slow down the steps in the learning process and we’re doing more fun things like pop quizzes to make sure the students are observing and understanding the content,” Ms Owen said.

She said the education community needs to be vigilant of the unknown impacts on school students during this time, and if governing bodies aren’t bringing attention to it, then they’re being naive.

“We’re already seeing tiny aspects of the impact this is having on students from things like when we have any community activity we get almost 100 per cent attendance, even if they are voluntary, so we need to keep an eye on the impacts of the students feeling like they are missing the community they belong to,” she said.

“At this stage, everything we do is first and foremost to keep the students safe with their wellbeing at the forefront, and that the continuity of learning is something that doesn’t make them feel like they’re falling behind anyone else.”

Ms Owen said she wants students to feel as though they’re doing something meaningful and worthwhile to keep them engaged.

“To be able to mitigate their wellbeing in the long-term means being hypervigilant in the short-term.”

She is keeping positive that they will be able to have their Year 12 formal as normal as possible this year, but have multiple plans in place if the restrictions are to continue until the end of the year.

“There’s always a way to celebrate and share all the joys of this rite of passage and we are looking at having a formal towards the end of the year, but we’re watching closely at what is happening and will never work outside of the external requirements,” Ms Owen said.

Dickson College principal: Craig Edwards

Dickson College principal Craig Edwards said he feels for this Year 12 cohort particularly, who are now doing their second round of remote learning as they did in their first semester of Year 11 and it remains to be seen what longer-term impacts this will have on their academic success as well as on their emotional and social wellbeing.

The remote learning plan for Dickson College this time around has been a much smoother process than in 2020, having learnt what works best for their students and teachers from the feedback received last year.

“When we did remote learning in 2020, we tried to use the normal timetable but quickly learnt that wasn’t going to work. For example, the days and the lessons were too long in the online experience and both students and teachers were getting tired. So we changed the timetable to make the days run shorter with online lessons starting at 9.30am until 3pm with classes running for one hour instead of the usual double periods,” Mr Edwards said.

In terms of engaging with students, he said he frequently checks in with students on the student leadership board as well as other groups. They say they’re liking the schedule which gives them a breather and large blocks of time to work without distraction and are able to spend time with their family, which has been a positive from the lockdown.

“Having the students at school and in-person means you get so much information walking around to classes, but from what I’ve heard from the students while working remotely is that they miss their peers and classmates, and I’m noticing the social isolation is a key negative from the experience,” he said.

“The students do say their teachers are using the online platform where they can to promote a connection with their peers, but it’s obviously not the same as being in the classroom and on the school campus.”

Dickson College Year 12 student

One Year 12 student from Dickson College told Canberra Daily that attending school in person is “so, so much better”. She misses seeing her friends and hanging out between classes but does get a laugh out of the different filters on Google Meets.

“Online school does have some benefits like you can wake up five minutes before your call and you don’t have to travel to and from school. But it just doesn’t beat being able to see your friends at lunch or making the desperate dash from Dickson back to school after you misjudge how long it’d take to get food,” she said.

“It’s definitely different, but everyone has had a bit of practice from last year, so things are running a little smoother this time round. It’s still very strange though and I think it’s difficult for teachers and students.”

She said with her school’s new online learning layout, she is finding it difficult to complete her schoolwork as the classes go quite quickly. This means she ends up having to finish it outside of class times, which piles up along with the assignments and revision that are also required.

“If I could change one thing about online school, I would set less work. Obviously, there is a curriculum but doing the same amount of content we’d be expected to do if we were at school, in a shorter period, is just very difficult to achieve and it’s easy to fall behind on things.

“I feel as though we don’t have enough contact with our teachers, you’re encouraged to ask questions during class or email them if you need but it just isn’t really the same and I feel it’s often difficult to express what you mean over email or video,” she said.

She described the online classes as “awkward” because not many students have their cameras turned on, and the teachers seem to be the only ones laughing at their own jokes.

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