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Suzanne

Teacher of Performing Arts and CitizenshipSpain 

 

Life before Covid-19 

I’ve been teaching Drama and Music for the past 23 years at an international school near Alicante in Spain. I think there are 50 plus nationalities at present; there have been times when it was predominantly English nationals but over the past few years, we’ve had many nationalities from across the world joining the student body. We follow the British curriculum, so the children are ultimately working towards GSCEs and A levels as well as the Spanish Bachillerato. My responsibility is to head up Performing Arts and also the Citizenship programme in the senior school. My timetable involves teaching Drama and Music to Key Stage 3 and 4 (so GCSEs and A levels), Citizenship in KS3 and IGCSE Global Perspectives in KS4. It’s a hefty workload but it’s very varied which is what I absolutely love about it. Regarding support, there is a whole school system in place for children who have language and other needs. But support staff do not work in our rooms; they withdraw the children from ‘non-essential’ subjects ie. Drama, Music or Citizenship!  

It’s ridiculous because these are the very subjects where they could be thriving, where they could actually practise their language through role play, socialise, and get from behind the desk and move around, which I think is so important. 

The main challenge in the classroom is always one of language difficulties and this challenge is magnified when children join the school at GCSE level. This means we get students arriving with limited English and there’s no immersion in a language programme before they tackle the actual subject contentI have a student in year 10 who came with very little English but also had done no drama whatsoever before. So not only was she struggling with language, she couldn’t grasp the drama concepts either.  So, it’s constantly having to reassess how I will teach the rest of the class and then make sure she’s included so that she feels a part of every lesson. But I think one of the main things we forget, and I see this in Citizenship an awful lot. 

Wforget that just because children don’t have the language doesn’t mean that they don’t have the intelligence and the understanding. 

 Once materials are translated, they can excel with their knowledge of world issues, so I like to give them time to do their translations and work in any way that helps them to participate 

So, what was life like before Covid?  I loved it. We have a lovely big theatre and rooms built specifically for the arts and it is my little haven. I’ve worked in all sorts of tiny little rooms before, done drama on the playground over the years, and now I have somewhere I really love to go every day. And for me, even though I’m middle management, my forte is with the children, in the classroom. 

I don’t want to be anywhere else but in the classroom. 

I love to see faces and the instant reaction I get in the subjects I teach; there’s always something positive to go home with. 

Life in lockdown 

We didn’t have any prior warning to prepare for distance learning. Friday 13th March we were informed and Monday we began a whole new way of working. With Citizenship we soon decided to put classes together and team teach. It works really well because we don’t have to manage the admin at the same time as the delivery and the children don’t get bored waiting while we do registers and housekeeping. The children have also had to learn how to manage themselves. We are all Google at school; the children have their own email and could easily get to their Google Meet lessons. But Zoom is a better platform for my needs, so I have been trying to get students to join Zoom meetings with a link. This has been a problem for me because both the parents and children are struggling to use a different platform.  Now I’m having to use both to placate some parents, and many children are just not engaging at all. What we found is, the majority of the parents have said you must do your core subjects and then you can just decide about the rest. So as usual, Drama and Music are the first ones to go.  

As an arts teacher, I knew immediately that it was going to be much more difficult than subjects where you can just set work and be there to answer questions.  

We had to be more creative from the word go. However, we have Arts teachers all over the world going through the same thing so there came an influx of material that I had never found before that was so suitable and that will help in the future. 

As part of their GCSE and A level Drama the students need to watch professional theatre. We live in Spain, there is no English theatre here of a professional standard and in lockdown we’ve had it all for free. The students are starting to change the way they talk about drama as a result of it because now they have a broader view of the sheer number of ways a scene can be played, directed, set. Last week we watched The Barber Shop Chronicles from the National Theatre which depicts how the barber shop has been the epicentre for the black community to discuss their troubles and woes and watch the football through generations. For those struggling with language, the National Theatre’s Frankenstein was a story that they knew and it is such a visual masterpiece that at times it needed no words. So I think for my GCSE children it’s been a gift. 

It’s also given some children the chance to work at their own pace and it’s given me a chance to understand their needs, how they prefer to work. With some children who have English as a second language, we were achieving very little in 50 mins per week but with more time and with flexible ways of working, they are producing work they are proud of.  

believe this experience has given me insight into their specific needs and am in a better position to support them going forward. 

One of the most difficult things for me is that I miss the faces and feelings.  

My teaching has always relied on faces, I can look around the room and know exactly how engaged they are and whether they’re enjoying it but online the children don’t have to have their cameras on if they don’t want to and if they do have their cameras on, you have to ask have you got a parent in the house? for obvious safeguarding issues. Another challenge is that many of the children just won’t speak. They use the chat facility but it’s so time consuming for what is often a limited response.  

We’ve also been told lessons mustn’t be teacher led, they need to be interactive. It’s absolutely right that it shouldn’t just be a monologue from me but it’s very difficult for it not to be a monologue if they’re not replying! So my main challenge is to get them to react via this medium as in both citizenship and drama we need spoken response and discussion to be a major part of their learning. 

Support and personal challenges 

I think managers are completely overloaded so my emails are not being answered.  I’m aware the priority is keeping parents and learners happy.  In my department staff tend to support each other. We do practical things like team teaching, but we also make a point of sharing good things that happen during the day: ‘oh I’ve just had a wonderful thing, you’ll never guess what’s happened!’ It’s that kind of phone call, nice and relaxed. I do have a music teacher who’s been through a very difficult time with a lengthy illness. Unavoidably, she has many low days and feels extremely isolated and I felt the pressures that she was going through and worked to support her as a friend and keep some focus on learning throughout the department.  

I think the thing that keeps me going is the children, the fact that I still have contact with them. 

They will always be my main motivation for being there every day and they give me something amazing back every day. I’ve also quite enjoyed being at home. While I miss my school, I miss my studio, I have enjoyed being with my husband and spending the evening sitting out watching the sun go down. It’s been good to escape from every day life and just find myself a little.  Before Covid it was work work work and I was struggling to sleep at night and very tired in the day time so I’m actually finding more peace. 

Future concerns and hopes 

This week we’re putting in GCSE grades. They matter to children’s lives and that matters to me. But I’m starting to worry that people will say it’s a perfect opportunity to put in grades that are not deserved.  

Some of these children are A* - will people believe me? 

I have their evidence and I just want to show it to everybody and say ‘Look at this, look what they’ve done!...It’s amazing!’  By the same token I’m very aware that there may be people slipping through.  It would not be ethical to assign higher grades than the work warrants but we also have to take into account the two years of learning and what they may have achieved in the classroom in the final months before examination. The professionalism of the teachers will find a healthy balance I'm sure. 

Both staff and children will be returning with so many new IT skills and this will almost certainly influence the ways of working as a school. There’s talk of blended learning and a quote from the last staff meeting “we are a digital school…as from September we are digital”. I don’t know how this will work for my subjects; we are gathering tools for the future now but there are so many practical issues.  

Of course, the fact that the children have become more au fait with their technology means they can create work they can keep.  

The only thing that worries me is when you’re creating work like this, management like to use the Arts perhaps to create publicity for a school that’s fee paying.  I want to make sure that my department exists for its value for the children, not just the publicity. 

I’m hoping that the Arts will be recognised for the tool that it is - and now also for getting people through the worst times. 

I’m hoping that people will realise that [the Arts] is not just a subject that you do if you can’t find anything else in that box, it’s a subject that can give you joy and lifelong learning. 

I’m hoping that people will start to give it more of a value and that the people who make the decisions on how our students choose their subjects will encourage the parents and learners to understand the value of subjects that develop communication and team skills.

I hope in general that the children come out of this with more empathy for others. I’m hoping it may change their thinking which would be a good thing because we often witness quite selfish opinions voiced in Citizenship that were worrying for me. We live in a bubble in our school; it’s beautiful and we don’t have to be exposed to nasty things. Our children usually have everything they want and sometimes don’t appreciate the opportunity they have been given. I'm hoping that will change. I think children will begin to appreciate their responsibilities for their world ahead after being so exposed to a world pandemic. I can see signs with projects we have been doing in lockdown. Some 12 year olds showed such maturity about the state of the world but such positivity as well: ‘I will be happy when I can be with my friends but I’m really pleased that the world is having time to rejuvenate’ and ‘I’ve really enjoyed being with my family and it’s an important time and we will remember this’.