AS@H Reflections

As a Student Reflection:

ASC at Home…now at Peace. 

The start of 2020 has been something of a wild ride. The school year started fairly normally, but with the spread of COVID-19 we moved to All Saints’ @ Home (AS@H). We at All Saints’ have been very fortunate to have the opportunity to learn from home and only had a week truly without school. Some schools, states and even entire countries are still confined to their homes, not as fortunate as we are in the most isolated capital city in the world. 

Acknowledgments and Thanks

Before reflecting on AS@H there are some people we need to remember. The leaders of our country and our state for acting quickly and decisively. While we may not agree with everything done by the State and Federal Governments, it is abundantly clear that we are much better off than we would have been if no action was taken. A quick look at almost any other country reveals how lucky we are. 

Essential and front-line workers. Be it nurses, doctors, chaplains in hospitals, cleaners, truck drivers, grocery store workers, therapists or a hundred other groups of hard-working people, we all have someone to thank for putting themselves and their families at risk to support their community.  

The whole technology team of staff (and students) led by Mr Port and Mr Mackay-Scollay who put in hours of hard work to get the AS@H system set up so we could continue to learn.

Teachers across the College who spent their valuable time to put together online lessons and collate resources.

Ms Provis, Ms Hill, Mr Russell and the Leadership Team at All Saints’ have also put in the hard yards to discuss and decide what course would be best for the safety of staff and students. They take on the responsibility for the wellbeing of the entire College – no easy task. 

Finally, I think the students who have faced extra challenges with online learning merit acknowledgement. Every single one of us has experienced this pandemic differently; some students are still at home for the safety of themselves or their family and some – with parents who are essential workers – never were. There is a myriad of reasons your AS@H experience might have been just a little tougher than your friends (and I’m sure at least one applies to every single member of the ASC community). So well done to everyone who has – or soon will – come out the other side. 

Positives

AS@H had many benefits – aside from the superficial lack of uniforms, freedom to use your phone and ability to use the microwave at lunchtime – it gave us all new opportunities to learn and grow. 

Learning at home gave students the freedom to learn when and how they want. The days at home lacked the structured schedule of school and this allowed us to work on the material at our own pace. Some benefits of this freedom included spending more time on more difficult or complex concepts and less on what we found easier, and fewer interruptions forcing us to stop at the end of the hour. Synchronous lessons had set time slots, but other classes were up to us to manage.

Many teachers provided recordings of their lessons so students could structure their learning. These recordings can be accessed repeatedly and paused at will, providing more freedom in the speed of learning. Any material we didn’t understand can be watched again to help develop understanding.

The lack of face-to-face exposure with teachers forced students to access and use all resources available to us, this presented opportunities to discover new learning styles. Opening a different textbook or accessing a different learning site can open your eyes to a different way to cover material that works better for you.

Negatives

AS@H kept both staff and students safe, but it also removed face-to-face human contact. Social interactions are vital to our health and wellbeing. 

There are plenty of other ways to stay in contact but not seeing everyone at school every day was a difficult adjustment.

Learning through AS@H meant we couldn’t collaborate or discuss the material. For very collaborative subjects, such as Literature, this limited interact severely altered learning.

For teachers, one major disadvantage of home learning was the lack of indication of the students’ understanding during class. 

In the words of my Year 12 Chemistry teacher, 

“I missed seeing the question marks on your faces.” - Ms Angela Schoen

Our confused expressions usually can help her assess our understanding of concepts and gauge how long to spend on different topics.

What we learnt

I know many students learnt exactly how little work their siblings do as soon as there isn’t a teacher at their shoulder, we also learnt how the family cat spends the day, and how annoying parents and siblings can be when trying to work at home. 

Everyone learnt more about video calls and conferencing. Using Teams for school and Zoom for other meetings was a steep learning curve.

The lack of contact with teachers meant less pressure to complete homework or work hard. This was a blessing in disguise, particularly for Years 10–12. The experience of learning at home without direct contact from teachers, and sometimes without structured lesson plans, was a lot like the exam period for Year 11s and 12s, knowing you need to work but sometimes unable to find the motivation to do so.

AS@H presented an opportunity to learn how you work best at home – getting up at the same time, having a set schedule, planning the days in advance, working a little every day, cramming it all in at the end. Now is a good time to learn how you work best, rather than in the week before exams. 

While learning from home, we all had to learn new ways of keeping in contact and staying fit and healthy (especially with the fridge right there all day, every day).

The lack of contact with friends and teachers helped me learn how important it is to see people every day and to be able to learn and study collaboratively. 

Looking Back

I sincerely hope we never have another event requiring all non-essential personnel to work and study at home. However, if someone were to tell me tomorrow that we would be returning to quarantine, there are some things I would do differently. Scheduling my days better and being more diligent in following my plans is just an example.

I think everyone learnt something about themselves while at home. Hopefully, some of this learning (whether from AS@H or just in general) can be brought forward to the future.

Looking Ahead

For many of the Year 12s, AS@H was stressful. We didn’t know when we’d be back at school, what impact it would have on our final marks, or if any changes would be made to final exams. One bright spot for the Class of 2020 is the opening of early offers to many universities, usually not available until later in the year and rarely unconditional. This is a good thing in a trying time, and I hope all eligible Year 12s make the most of this opportunity.

Everything we learnt about ourselves, our learning style and the resources available to help us should not go down the drain. Continue to utilise everything our teachers worked so hard to set up even when it’s no longer the only option. 

Supporting each other and the global community in the coming months will be vital. Hundreds of thousands of Australians have lost their jobs, and hundreds of people have lost loved ones during this pandemic. Supporting people is our privilege and our responsibility – whether it’s delivering a meal to a neighbour, donating goods to staff at a hospital, doing extra chores at home to support your parents, providing a shoulder to cry on, sending a message of support to your friends, helping to wipe down desks in the classroom – anything helps. 

Finally, gratitude. We at All Saints’ have had every advantage – just the existence of AS@H is testament to that. Remember not everyone has had access to education during COVID-19, not every city has come out relatively unscathed, and those in our community and around the world who struggled for a reliable income or food supply have been disproportionally affected. Take a moment to consider everyone who contributed to our situation here and say thank you. 

Lexie O’Brien (Year 12)

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