JUNIOR GRAMMAR
I am in awe of how our parent community responded with both positivity and optimism in focusing on supporting their children through this period of uncertainty.
Overcoming Challenges The landscape of education, like much of the world, has been transformed throughout 2020. The emergence of COVID-19 as an international concern has certainly changed nearly every aspect of our lives, from how we conduct our work or learning, how we maintain our households, and indeed how we remain socially connected to family and friends. I have been immensely grateful and proud of the commitment of the Junior Grammar staff in accommodating this period of rapid and extraordinary change regarding how they deliver teaching and learning programs, engage with children and their families learning remotely and face-to-face, and what it now ‘looks like, sounds like, and feels like…’ to be an educator, and indeed a school. The global pandemic of COVID-19 has presented a vast array of challenges for the world. The pandemic has also presented challenges at a local and on a personal
level. It is interesting to note the words of President John F. Kennedy, in a speech presented in April 1959 in Indianapolis, “The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word “crisis”. One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger, but recognise the opportunity.” While Chinese linguistic expert, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania Victor H. Mair, has since labelled this as an error of interpretation, it does perhaps indicate a fundamental human tendency to find the positive in a difficult situation. When written, the Chinese word for crisis is composed of two characters, one of these characters represents “danger” while the other character represents the meaning of “pivot” or “crucial point”. As an educator, I prefer
to view this crisis as a pivotal moment to reflect on what education could be in the future. This to me is the ‘silver lining’ of a problem or in this case a crisis. I have been immensely grateful and proud of the commitment of the Junior Grammar staff in responding to the transformation of the educational landscape throughout 2020. Our staff accommodated this period of rapid and extraordinary change in how they delivered teaching and learning programs, how they engaged with children and their families learning remotely and face-to-face, and what it ‘looked like, sounded like, and felt like…’ to be an educator. Additionally, I am in awe of how our parent community responded with both positivity and optimism in focusing on supporting their children through this period of uncertainty. As a teaching staff we understand the @GRAMMAR | ISSUE 17 | 2020 | 15
