Crew Young are used to my cheery salutation of “morning, Youngsters!” to welcome them to Crew at 8.30 every morning, and also my daily “make it count!” reminder as they are dismissed at 9.15 to begin a day’s learning at XP East.
Incredibly, it is over four weeks since they last heard these greetings and reminders, as life as we know it was turned upside down by the effects of the Coronavirus restrictions. Simple routines such as this are very important to me, and to us, as they help to define our concept of “normality” in an increasingly abnormal world. Whilst we might be enjoying the extra time to ourselves, it is sometimes overwhelming to be suddenly given so much unstructured time.
I was really pleased to speak to nearly all of Crew Young and their parents today, to check in with them, recognise, celebrate and praise their work completion (and issue a few reminders) as we all come to terms with the new restrictions on our lives. I discovered that Louie recently achieved his NVQ Level 1 Fire Cadet and First Aid awards, Maclaren is managing to maintain his Tae-kwon-do skills using instructional video tutorials, and that Dominic is using lego for one of his distance learning task set. Summer was just one week away from completing the physical standard of her bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award.
A special shout out must go to Summer and Lewis for being completely on top of all their studies – nice work you two! Most of Crew Young are not too far behind!
Cliff Young, the Australian farmer who was the inspiration behind our choice of Crew name, became famous for approaching things from a new angle, for doing things that nobody else had even considered, and from thinking “outside the box”. It is this approach that we must all embrace as we grapple with the practicalities of working and studying from home.
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