“Intelligent lockdown”: this was the phrase that the Dutch government used when it decided to shut down most of the country on 15 March 2020. School, childcare, restaurants - all were to be closed until at least 6 April.
Immediately, teachers were supposed to deliver online lessons. We were expected to be ready to go with distance learning in an instant.
Luckily, our school already worked with the online tools Somtoday and It’s Learning, so handing in, marking and homework were covered. We now also began to use Microsoft Teams to teach online.
In a group of 30 adolescents there will always be those who find it excruciatingly amusing to mute or kick other students out of the chat and - in extreme cases of boredom - to even mute the teacher. (Yes, I know that there are ways to work around that, but it is still extremely annoying.)
You mostly just find yourself talking to pictures that the students find funny. And, since it is impossible to have all students on your screen at once, you are usually only talking to eight of these pictures at most.
Coronavirus: Returning to school was a ‘massive relief’
Needless to say, after all of this, it was a massive relief to hear that we would be allowed to return to school on 2 June, right after Pentecost weekend. We were all looking forward to it.
During the weeks leading up to our return, our caretakers were busy designing routes in and around our school building - creating a one-way system, complete with arrows and stop signs.
Disinfectant hand gel and tissues were stationed at every entrance. Classrooms were also well-stocked with tissues, gels and cleansing wipes.
Being a school of around 1,200 pupils, it was never an option to get everyone back at the same time while maintaining distancing measures.
Therefore, a new schedule was put in place. Upper forms were to return first - teachers had already been asked which groups needed to get back as a priority and we were, of course, keen for upper-form students, especially the pre-exam years, to get back on track.
It was decided that these students would initially attend 30-minute lessons to get information about what to do for their upcoming tests and have an opportunity to ask questions. After this, they would have a 10-day extended “test week” in our sports hall.
How can we help pupils catch up after coronavirus?
Alongside this, lower forms had their own new schedule: three weeks of three 50-minute lessons a day in small groups, with no break and the obligation to leave school immediately afterwards. This meant that they were to come to school for three live lessons and have their other lessons at home, online.
Teacher ‘déjà vu’ in the lesson cycle
For us teachers, this meant teaching the exact same lesson three times to three different groups of about 10 students each - who, when together, made up a former class group of about 30.
Like a carousel, we teachers went from classroom to classroom, teaching the same lesson three times. I experienced it as a kind of scheduled déjà vu, where I constantly had the feeling that I was saying the exact same thing that I had said just a couple of minutes ago. Of course, it usually turned out that I had said that exact same thing before, but only with a different group.
Of course, teachers and students also needed to keep 1.5m apart. We were not required to wear face masks, but students and teachers had to disinfect their hands, desk and keyboard before starting a lesson, and go through this whole motion again when leaving.
Tired of teaching the same lesson on repeat
So how has it all gone?
The experience has definitely been mixed. At first, we - both teachers and students - were all excited to see each other again. But after a week, I think we had all already grown tired of it.
Students had more or less expected the return to school to be a bit of a social occasion, and were rather disappointed when it turned out that they had actual lessons. Teachers, on the other hand, were disappointed in students for not taking things more seriously.
After three weeks, I can safely say that most of us are quite fed up with this whole three-lesson thing. We have made it clear to our management that we are not willing to continue like this next year. We’ve already had a meeting to discuss possible scenarios for the new year, and this is definitely not one of them.
Of course, what will actually happen next school year is not clear yet; it depends on what the situation with the coronavirus is.
However, with only about 50 people in intensive care at the time of writing, and only limited amounts of people ill or infected, we have high hopes that next year we will be able to teach at school normally again. In the north of the Netherlands, where I live, there are hardly any corona cases at all at the moment.
If not, we will try and find different ways of working: such as streaming lessons, or having a hybrid schedule with some lessons online and some at school. The only thing I have not figured out yet is how to make tests work well online, but some of my colleagues are currently testing online applications that might work.
So far, this has been a really weird year. But hopefully, things will get back to normal as much as possible next year.
Beitsche Bekius is a humanities teacher at CS Vincent van Gogh, a secondary school in Assen, Netherlands
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