May 7th 2020
The importance of connecting
‘Can we Zoom later?’ are four words I never expected my mother to say to me ever but the Coronavirus situation has highlighted to me how important connecting with people really is. The Zoom I remember from my childhood was an ice lolly that my brother and I used to enjoy. What both the 80s Zoom and the Zoom of the 2020s have in common is that they encourage connecting with people over a common theme!
Week 1 of Virtual Moulsford highlighted to me my favourite part of teaching and that is the interactions with pupils in order to bring a lesson to life. At the start of my lessons, I’ve enjoyed chatting to boys as others log in and the sense of togetherness that this brings amongst the class. The look on their faces as they can have a conversation and exchange thoughts on our topics has shown me the real value in talking to people.
During 7W Form Time, it has been lovely to see how open and honest the boys have been over Google Meet. My form has appeared to really value the opportunity to connect with each other during this time and just talk about ‘stuff’! We have bonded over ‘Silly Hat’ Day and even brought some pets in to connect with our conversations. ‘Tonka’, ‘Rocket’ and ‘Treacle’ were great inclusions on the register last Friday.
Connecting with people brings the opportunity to create memories and these in turn then bring happiness for many people. In the hectic world of pre-Coronavirus, we were always quick to call ‘connecting’ with people as something simple like ‘you ok?’ This usually elicited an equally mundane response as both sides realised they had to get somewhere quickly. Another wish for the post-coronavirus world would be that the ‘two word’ style of connection becomes more like two minutes as this will then help more people to feel truly valued.
Enough from me….time to go to the supermarket and see if Zooms still exist and then see if my mother can operate Zoom successfully yet?
