Dennis Richards: Lockdown life of Twitter, Zoom and peas

Yet another lockdown column, I hear you say. It’s the new normal….. the latest snappy catch phrase I am told. But at least I can bring you up to date about the row raging on Twitter about online learning. In short, a teacher, who has no child care responsibilities at home, is enjoying the flexibility. A bit of a lie-in, a leisurely breakfast and no playground duty. For those teachers trying to home school their own children, at the same time as teaching other young children, it’s the stuff of nightmares. Not forgetting for one minute the teacher heroes on the front-line actually present in the school buildings, ensuring that key workers can do their jobs. And then there’s the new phenomenon…. online meetings. Zoom it is called. Once you’ve organised your “shelfie” (i.e a suitable backdrop of serious looking academic books), angled your head downwards, so fellow zoomers are not looking up your nose, the fun can begin.

At first it was chaos. I’m not quite sure how to put this, but you may have noticed, that teachers like the sound of their own voices. Mayhem ensues. It’s better now. In our last session one colleague had the family dog asleep on her lap and begged us to keep our voices down. Another appeared to be sitting in a deck chair. At one stage a colleague left the meeting for “undisclosed reasons”.

We only knew he’d left, because he placed Paddington Bear in front of the screen. My colleagues, rather cruelly I thought, suggested in his absence that Paddington was making a more useful contribution to the meeting than he was.

Much discussion among teachers about which age group of our students is coming out worst from this enforced absence from school. For what it’s worth I would give my own two penny-worth vote for this year’s exam candidates.

In normal times the exam season would now be underway, the students on study leave, post-it notes and index cards strewn around the house and the serious last minute cramming in full swing. Instead of which much confusion. Should they be working or not? Maybe it’s too late to raise their proposed grade, but are they going to be offered the chance of a re-sit? And what are the exact criteria for awarding a grade? Is this really transparent and fair? Thankfully the universities are giving every indication that they will try to honour applicants’ first choice offers.

Meanwhile lockdown activity continues apace. Crosswords, reading and box sets. But there has to be challenge in there as well. Otherwise the work ethic kicks in and I feel I have to deserve the treats. So gardening it is. It’s brought back memories of failure and acute disappointment. Masochism or what? I have this vague recollection of a cricket groundsman keeping a night time vigil over the ground, fearful of vandalism. “He’s gone to bed with his pitch”, said his long-suffering wife. The same could be said of me and my newly planted peas. If you love pigeons, stop reading. Now that they are plucking out my peas, before they have even had chance to bob their tiny little heads above ground, war is declared.

Thankfully the weather is good and I can eat breakfast watching over my peas. The test will come when it rains and I’m having to sit there under a brolly. I can also report I am closing in on grade two piano standard. I have moved on to Les Miserables (Easy Piano version). I am practising hard for a performance of my favourite song. “On my own”. It’s the new normal.