This isn't much of a photo but it's one that makes me cry. UK schools have been ordered to shut so it means with just a few hours warning, I had to say goodbye to the upper sixth who leave and will not take exams. You'd think they'd be happy, huh? They're not- they're devastated. They're looking at all the work they've put in and wondering what it was all for. They're missing the final validation, the acknowledgement from the world that they achieved something. They're afraid they'll forever be the joke generation- "What A levels did you get?...but you didn't actually take the exams, did you?" They're being taken from their safe and familiar environment and being thrown into a world where they have no control and no information. Just how ARE they going to be awarded their grades. I'm their teacher and I can't answer that. I've shed tears for them and yet I had to say goodbye to them today without their leaving service, without their prom, without a purpose of preparing for exams and revising, without an idea of how they're going to get to university. I'm beyond words.... bye my lovely 13....
Such disorientation everywhere. Too late to tell them that, far from being the joke generation, they'll be the generation that lived through that big pandemic. Think of the stories they'll have to tell their grandkids.
We finished school here in Japan early with very little warning but, thankfully, close enough to the end of the school year (Japan is April to March) that we didn't have quite as much stress as you all in the UK. I can't fully grasp how tough it must be for you all right now, and hope you can get a chance to have a reunion & a proper goodbye once this is all over. Good luck!
All schools are closed here in Florida, but teachers have to present their lessons to their students over the internet, so school continues at home. All end of the year and state exams are cancelled.
March 22nd, 2020
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