Jennifer Selinger – Head of Science

View from the Kleinlehrer Family Science Building……and my balcony

Well! Things have certainly changed rapidly, and we are all breathless with trying to keep up. My ‘view’ has been a little different this week! Yesterday I worked from school, and the view was much the same, but the audio that went with it was vastly different!

Instead of noisy banging of lockers and yelling of Year 12 boys to start my day off there was … silence. In period 1, when I would normally be working to the accompaniment of classroom sounds from K20 and K24, there was nothing to be heard. In periods 2 and 4, I ‘Zoomed’ with my Year 11 classes. It was great to actually hear their voices and see their faces as they assured me that they knew exactly what to do! I went back to the staffroom feeling reassured that all was well. We corresponded in silence using the chat on Reshet, and although it occasionally resembled one of those WhatsApp conversations when everyone is just a bit out of sync with their answers, we muddled through.

A room with a view!

Today my view is of the trees in the garden outside the window. I am trialling working from home and finding it even quieter (at least at school there were a few people around!). My first class is after recess, so I have been spending my morning making sure that the next set of lessons for Year 12 make sense and have enough detail in them when I am not there to give the information and instructions in person. It is hard! Although I have had a lot of my material on Reshet for years, I didn’t realise until now how much active teaching I was doing in class! We are lucky that there are many good resources out there on the internet and that the textbook and Atomi give the students a good place to go to find the information they need. We are also extremely lucky that there are so many easy ways to stay in touch. My current set of tools includes the aforementioned Zoom and Reshet Chat, the ubiquitous Shared Google Doc and a very active email life!

I’m sure that as I go along, I will find more and more interesting and different ways to engage with my students at a distance. My inbox is full of professional reading as the amazing people out there send through tips and suggestions about on-line learning – I am delighted by how supportive the teaching community is at a time like this. I look forward to experimenting with them and learning along with my classes about the best ways to keep them connected and engaged … but the bottom line is … I miss their presence! Let’s hope we are back together soon, and I can go back to grumbling about how noisy Year 12 are at their lockers.