Coronavirus is Gonna Get Ya!

By Mary Ellen Flynn

Early in March I ushered my year 7s into my room for an English lesson. Daniel* turned to one of his friends and said, “Coronavirus! Coronavirus! Corona! Gonna get ya!” He held up his cane smiling and having a grand old time of it. “Stop it!” I screamed with a fireball of panic in my stomach. The way he taunted his friend with the virus—it was too much for me. While I told him off he stood, hands balanced on the black handle of his white cane and swaying his head back and forth.

“But Miss, but Miss…” he stammered.

“Sit down. This is not a game. Now sit down and get ready to read.” I was shaking and felt out of control. As an experienced teacher I know that is not an ideal way to start a lesson. However, I wanted to get them to understand that this was serious. However, I worried I was too tough on him, I reminded myself that he was no delicate flower. The year 7s could all use a reminder to be kinder to friends anyway. Having taught them all year, I knew that.

When I trained to be a teacher of the visually impaired, I learned to use my hands in a way that ensures that they are in charge. It is poor practice to take a child’s hand and plonk it down where it should be. Forget “poor practice”, it’s just not polite. The best thing to do is allow them to be in charge, encouraging them to use their fingers to discover things for themselves. This is done by asking permission, “can I show you?” Once permission is given you can gently slip your hand under theirs to convey them to what they need to “see”, their fingers free to discover the object themselves. In any other secondary school, I could go weeks and not need to hold a child’s hand, but here I need to be tactile. The Friday before the government announced school closures I was reading a Braille text with one of the year 10s. I want him to go to the fourth line, but he was having trouble finding it. Usually, it would be a simple matter of guiding him there with my hand, but there was this new thing called “social distancing”. I knew I shouldn’t, but I slipped my hand under his, placed it at the line. As I stood to put a dollop of anti-bacterial gel on my fingers making them sting where I had bitten them too much, I said, “Keep reading—good job.”

On Sunday 22nd March, when the government announced the school closures there was an added little bit of excitement. The schools would not be closed. On Twitter, I see the portmanteau “clopened” and was delighted by the ingenuity of language. They would be closed but open to children of key workers as well as those with Education and Healthcare Plans (EHCP)—what are considered “vulnerable” children. Messages from my colleagues on WhatsApp erupted. We are a special school—all of our children have EHCPs. One of my colleagues, a single mother, was worried about what she would do with her children if she had to go to work. I wondered too if I would have to bring my sons with me to work. Finally, we wondered how would we keep our pupils virus free in a school where children with vision impairments bump into each other all the time? We’re still trying to sort that out.

The next day we arrived at school unsure of what the day would bring. My colleague greeted me by placing her fingers together in the form of a heart, saying in her beautiful Black Country accent, “Now there’s my hug for you!” In the staff room there was a notice of a meeting at 9.00 am in the primary department’s large hall. In a great oval, the staff stood or sat in chairs, six feet apart from one another. Our head teacher, in chirpy tones, explained that she’d been on phone calls all weekend with the other heads of special schools in the area. She admitted that these things were all a work in progress and could change. Our union rep had asked good questions about measures being taken to protect us from the virus. Our head teacher assured us that she would do all she could to make sure we and the children are safe. I trusted her implicitly. One bright spot was that we learned that we were “key workers”. She said this with a laugh. We had no idea what this really meant. Finally she summed it all up this way: overnight we had gone from being educators to childcare providers.

Eventually, the A1 sized calendar on which I had written all the deadlines for the year became a sea of black lines. Work Experience for year 10s, GCSE English Exams, the camping residential, KS3 assessments and end of year assemblies-- all cancelled. Rituals are important and help us make sense of the world by seeing the result of our actions—sew your seeds, reap the rewards. That won’t happen for our children this year. As a teacher, I feel as if someone has surprised me by pulling a plaster off of my arm.

Lockdown has become a way of life. At one point I thought we’d have two weeks out before Easter and then be back at school after the two week holiday. That is laughable now. Staff are on a rota to teach/look after the children. I love the days I go to school. On Tuesday, I print/emboss work for children, write reports and other admin. I work with the children on Friday. The children do “work” in the mornings and then do something fun in the afternoon. There is laughter and sunshine: 15-minute breaks turn into forty-five minutes of chat with lovely colleagues and playing goal-ball with the children. The sound of the bell in the football is cheerful under the sun. The days feel so much lighter than a usual school day. In normal times, being in a school can be overwhelming with lack of space and so much noise; this quiet is odd.

There are good things though. I have more time to develop the initiative to increase the use of technology in our school. I have set up an iPad for Sarah, who is blind, so that she can practice using the Voiceover every day she is in. Her finger gestures deftly read a PDF of First News. Seeing her progress so much and do things she hadn’t done before is exciting. Without the pressure of the curriculum I can actually teach her the skills she needs. The relaxed pace helps her do this, making me think the old ways were too rushed and hectic.

The rest of my days at home are spent sitting in front of a laptop screen. I try to engage children online via email or Google Classroom, and a lot of my time early on in the Lockdown was spent figuring out how to use these tools. I have learned how to record and edit YouTube videos to send messages to my classes and clubs. I have Skype chats with a proactive year 13 who is keen to improve her reading. However, I am frustrated as I get a lot of radio silence from some of the children. I get irritated but remember that they are going through a lot. I don’t tell any of them off. The ones without computers have work posted to them using Articles for the Blind labels.

I phone the children in my Registration group—to see how they are getting on with their work and if we can them with anything else. Most of the parents aren’t too worried about the children doing work as other things preoccupy them. Speaking to Danny’s mom, I learn that he is spending most of his time playing in the garden. This is good news as, despite all his needs, he is active and is happiest when he is outside and able to run. In another call, she asks me to have a word with him since he is refusing to wash his hands properly. She has six children and I can hear the frustration in her voice. She puts him on the phone and he is amenable, promising to stop delaying Iftar and wash his hands when he is told. Anna’s mom tells me she is in the garden too. “If I’m honest, though,” she laughs, “she hasn’t done a lick of work.” What she is concerned about though is whether I know anything about the food vouchers for free school meals. As a special school, many of our children live a distance from our school. At the start of the Lockdown, a solution to transporting a single packed lunch miles away was to coordinate with schools nearer to them to provided it. Our Head Teacher directed her secretary to call the schools near our children in order to make sure they were all fed.

My year 11s have been largely quiet and my heart goes out to them for not having the chance to takes their exams. My focus turns to the year 10s. I want to encourage them to read and do the work I have set them, but I know they won’t. One of the boys has several brothers and sisters with one laptop between them. He is bright and tends to be lazy, but that’s not the whole story. I ask him to check his emails and he says, “I will try Miss”. Around the middle of April, Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary announced that laptops and 4G routers, especially for year 10 pupils taking GCSEs next year, would be made available. A month later and my year 10s still don’t have the equipment they need.

The feeling of missing the children is like a wrench in my chest. I worry a lot. But, I am hopeful as well. Most of the children are becoming more independent without us to support them constantly. It’s a good thing to let them struggle a bit. Optimism is a survival skill when teaching children with special educational needs, and it is needed more than ever now.

*All names have been changed.

Mary Ellen Flynn is a writer and educator.