PM Jacinda Ardern teases details of NZ under alert level 3 on Mike Hosking Breakfast. Video / Newstalk ZB
COMMENT:
With the country possibly edging closer to alert level 3, thanks to the efforts of all New Zealanders who stayed home and all the essential workers who kept us all safe and healthy, the country is, slowly but surely, switching up a gear.
More businesses will be allowed to operate at level 3, which will mean more people out of the house and working again. For those people's children, at least, that means a return to school.
Parents are understandably worried, and so are teachers - we all want to keep ourselves and our bubbles safe.
Regardless, we can't get so caught up debating what we should and shouldn't do that we forget to prepare our children for the vastly different world they will face the moment they get dropped off at the school gates again.
There's very little of that that is going to feel like a "return" to something they knew.
More than preparing children for maths or chemistry or any other school subject, we need to be preparing them for the new reality they will face the moment they step outside the home to go back to school.
School, as our children knew it, no longer exists - or won't for a while. Photo / 123rf
They're the ones who'll have to remember to keep their distance, to sit far apart from each other, to not hug their colleagues, to use hand sanitiser, to not break their classroom bubble.
They're the ones who have to understand why break times are now staggered and they can't hang out with their friends from a different classroom that just a couple of months ago played freely outside with them.
This is not something we can tell them the night before as we tuck them into bed. This is something that is going to take a while to internalise.
For most 8 or 9-year-olds, that won't come naturally. Social distancing is not something we've been preparing our children for but it has now been sprung up on them.
They need to adapt - fast.
We've spent years dreaming up the schools of the future and all our predictions were based on fancy, state-of-the-art technology. We never expected part of this new vision for the future included shifting tables and chairs so children wouldn't touch, or having to dream up PE lessons without balls or ropes.
We're all geared up with tech tools - but how do we give our children a crash-course on facing the outside world in the age of social distancing?
How do you foster childhood friendships without physical contact? How do we expect children to even understand how it all works, what's safe and what isn't, if we're all still wrapping our heads around this, too?
The Ministry of Health says PPE won't be needed at schools because the lower attendance numbers will ensure there's no risk. But there's still a lot children will have to care about. There's also the way to and from school. There's every social interaction in the school yard.
Of course adults will be on hand to ensure different classes don't mix and children stay safe. Staggered start times and smaller bubbles are some of the ways this will be ensured. But we should still pause and take stock of what we're asking our kids' brains to process, in a very short timeframe.
We're busy debating details and forgetting the bigger picture. It's time to grow up, and think of the children.
