What are our young people learning from the pandemic?

In planning out January, I decided on the theme ‘It’ll be okay’, and over the next few weeks I’ll be telling you about various people who had problems in their education when life didn’t go as planned, and their journey since. I couldn’t have predicted the changes that would then happen after I’d written my plan, and this topic seems even more relevant now that schools are closed in lockdown and exams are being cancelled (I’ll be writing about that separately). So here’s a few of my thoughts about what our young people are learning:

Resilience 

Getting through tough times and coming out the other side will give our young people the capacity to recover from other tough times in their life. Yes this is difficult, but we can work with them and demonstrate our own ways of building resilience and looking after our mental health.

Psychology today suggests seven skills to help practice resilience, which you can work on with your young person.

Adapting to new situations

Never have things changed so quickly. One minute they are at school, and the next they are working at home. Change is not easy for anyone, and it is inevitable that this will be hard. However, every time they learn to manage change, they learn to adapt to the new circumstances in which they find themselves, a skill which transfers well into the workplace as an adult.

The importance of kindness to others

If I have noticed anything, it is that communities have been brought together to care for their most vulnerable. The Trussell Trust have seen record levels of donations to match their record numbers of referrals. Individuals have been doing morale boosting activities to entertain the children in their area, such as dressing up as elves and delivering candy canes, or delivering care packages. Has your young person expressed an interest in supporting others? What can you encourage them to do to be kind?

IT skills and remote learning

Schools are using all kinds of platforms to deliver education, such as School365, Google Classrooms, Zoom, Teams and Google Meet, as well as a whole range of individual online products. Remote learning is entirely different to learning in a classroom. It requires them to develop a new mindset, to create a workspace, and to access IT in a way they may not have used in the past. Given that everywhere does things differently, being familiar with a range of different software is essential in the age of tech. 

It also teaches them self discipline, and how to control their own workload and study schedules. Perfect preparation for exam years, higher education and beyond.

The importance of understanding data

Throughout the pandemic there has been a lot of references to data and numbers. We are surrounded by graphs listing the rates of infection and the rates of hospitalisation. Reading and interpreting graphs, and understanding the importance of what they show is a skill commonly used in most jobs where there is any kind of reporting. In addition, it gives our young people the opportunity to be critical of what they view, and to consider whether any correlations are in fact causations or just coincidences.

The value of essential workers

We are brought up to believe that the most essential workers are the likes of the emergency services, people maintaining our utilities (plumbers, electricians etc), and pharmacies. This pandemic has highlighted that in fact, some of the people on the lowest wages are in fact the scaffolding of our economy. Supermarket workers, waste management workers, unpaid carers and teachers, to name a few, have been thrown into the spotlight as we have found that actually, we cannot manage without them. Most of them are unable to complete their work from home, and they are expected to work on the front line, every day, putting themselves at risk. Indeed, some parts of the world has a higher risk than others, and we have seen the extreme measures that healthcare staff have had to go to in order to protect themselves and their families.

Coronavirus has provided us with a newfound appreciation for the small things, as well as the opportunity to expand our skills in other ways. Can you think of any other things your children, or indeed you, have learned during the pandemic?