Highschool in the time of virus

Sunday, April 5, 2020 Dear Reader Thank you for following the experiences of Aunt Escolástica and her nephews adjusting to ‘continuing education’ / ‘continuous learning’ / ‘home learning’. Thank you for your support and encouragement over the past two weeks. I hope you got as much from it as I did. I won’t be going on with this journal. This entry is the last. Several reasons, good ones, have brought this on. Here are a couple: 1.    We now have a wealth of wisdom, information and resources to aid us with the transition. Escolástica, just one small voice amongst many, will be drowned out. 2.    As such, the conceit gets harder to maintain. Like a tv series that has gone on one season too long, the narrative is likely to devolve into soap opera. Not a bad thing in itself, but it’s not what I want for my alter-ego, nor her wards. My general observation to this point is that we are working it out – kids and teachers, families and schools. I am so impressed with the intensity

Tuesday, March 31, 2020 It’s Tuesday. Any normal Year 12 Tuesday, Gabriel has Chemistry, Mathematics and English. In Year 10, Florentino has French, PE, History and English. In Year 8, it’s English, Science, Maths and Health for Juvenal. So after a morning meeting snuggled under blankets in the autumn sun, they headed to ‘mini-school’. In turn, each sat with me and explained the subject matter of their courses. This opened up discussion, tangential to classwork, but educative. Tino’s history class is studying the ‘Home Front’ during World War Two. Today he learned his great grandmother was a 'plane spotter' on the South Coast, and his great grandfathers, one a school teacher, the other operating an egg farm, were both considered ‘essential’ service providers and exempted from military service. Gabe’s physics class is exploring electricity and magnetism. We applied this practically to a schematic for an electricity transformer and went on to convert and regulate the out