29th January 2021
Even though I knew it was quite likely I was surprised at how incredibly disappointed the entire school staff and I were to hear that there were going to be level 5 restrictions until March. I imagine many of you felt similarly.
In my video greeting to the children this morning I was talking about how it is okay to be sad and disappointed. However when I joined the video chats today the children were all there, bright eyed, eager to share their news, join in with the science experiments, share the books they were reading and be their lovely selves.
I think I will have to follow their lead. The children particularly the younger classes are very much in the moment and don’t dwell on disappointment like I have been. The children I talked to today are going to be my mindfulness teachers this week. The lockdown and school closures are not something I can control and I shall just have to enjoy where I am. I hope that you can too.
We will continue to teach remotely, learning as we go. If any of you, have an area or skill that you would like to share with your child/ren’s class or the wider school community please do get in touch. Parental involvement and visits have always been a big part of RMDS so if you think you could put a lesson together, get in touch with me or the class teacher.
All the teachers felt this week that there was a dip in enthusiasm for the regular school work. This week we are going to try and see if we can reinvigorate things but we will need your help, let us know what’s working. As always feel free to make things work for your home situation, not everything has to be done. On the other side if you want more work feel free to allow your child to lead their own learning, these two extracurricular baking sessions caught my eye.
Rang a Sé have been talking about gratitude which is always a good way of shifting focus from what is missing. If that doesn’t work then they have also been looking at Van Gogh’s sunflowers, which never fail to cheer me up.
Today was another learning day for me. I learned all about floating and sinking fruit in Rang a Dó. Do you know if an orange will float with or without skin? If you don’t ask anyone in Rang a Dó and they can tell you. On the sinking theme, they have also started working on their Titanic projects, I’m looking forward to seeing this work as we continue with distance learning.
Thank you to everyone for your thoughts on the school zone. I had a very productive chat with Niamh from Dublin City Council earlier in the week. She was very interested in trying to make the school zone work for us and will be back in touch with the revised plan.
As always if you have any questions or suggestions, please get in touch, I love hearing from you.
Have a lovely weekend everyone,
Paul
