Community and Belonging

As I sit here working on my S3 online collaborative YPI groups for later this year, I have been shielding for a whole year! With only a brief reprieve in autumn, when the levels dipped so that I could attend school to teach 4 classes from 2 year group bubbles, I have been glued to my laptop, working from home. In the summer I moved out to the garage because at least I was able to experience sun, albeit from the safety of my front garden. However when the weather changed I was forced to move indoors again and thanks to Microsoft Teams and a pair of headphones I was able to operate alongside my furloughed family. Noise reduction hints from Mike Tholfson meant the pupils and teachers at the other end were not disturbed by the "can you make me a presenter" quips and the choice of my office background, (hastily photograbbed when the warning to shield was announced) gives the untidy reassurance that I am still part of my school community even though I am at the other side of the Central belt of Scotland.

So what has a year of shielding taught me? It has made me acutely aware of the way "vulnerability" is perceived by the general public and by those given the label. Back in the late 1980s when I had my occupational health assessment, required prior to registration with the GTCs, the middle aged male doctor accused me of being vulnerable. At the time I was incensed, as my fear of the chest Xray as a lifelong asthmatic had been my key concern but that had been passed and the doctor was referring to my splenectomy. What compunded my anger, was he had not even seen the long scar across my middle, (big enough to remove a rugby sized spleen from a short stumpy 16 year old) and asked to inspect my back where he thought he would find it. I dismissed his "accusation"for many years as senile scaremongering until 5 months of recurring chest infections forced me out of school and contemplating my vulnerability. Having pulled myself out of that slough of despair I was back again examining my vulnerability8 moths later when diagnosed with Stage 3 triple negative breast cancer; but my love for teaching helped me push through the treatments and into a hope for recovery, which was announced like a damp squib in 2019. By then I was back to full fitness and in a school where I was appreciated and felt I was thriving. I was looking forward to the year 2020 when virtually every member of my family was celebrating a major milestone by going on a well desrved cruise to new island resorts - the Canaries in July. Vulnerability was a thing of the past!

As we know the pandemic hit us like a large wave. For me I had just accepted that a chest infection had brought me down (the first one for eight years) and was at home on oral steroids. It took a couple of weeks to fully understand that being asplenic was the vulnerabilty although asthma was the disabling catalyst. I had recovered and felt fit, but school had closed in the meantime. After a lot of uncertainty ( I joined an facebook group called heriditary spherocytosis as my blood condition is too rare to be mentioned in general dispatches) the Chief Medical Officer decreed I was in fact clinically extremely vulnerable and did need to shield. The original shielding was harsh, confined to one room and my cancer fighting husband being dismissed to the reclining sofa to sleep. My daughter had returned from university and my son had essentially left school so they essentially became our carers. It was both disabling and bizarre and made me identify with the individuals that I use when teaching SQA National 5 Care from a personal standpoint. In my head I was not vulnerable at all but the way society was reacting to the pandemic had plunged me into this group out of concern that I might not survive, fully recover or at the very least I might overburden the NHS shoukd I catch COVID19!

So why the title community and belonging? In my isolated bedroom feeling very healthy, I could have become quite insular and morose had it not been for the online communities of #womenedScotland and #MIEEScotland and my school colleagues on WhatsApp. Being part of these three groups enabled me to feel coonected to my work, and my passion for lifelong learning. Every week the #womenedwednesday mutually supportive tweets helped me to feel as though there were other women all around the country who could inspire, sympathise and connect with me on a personal level. Some I met back at the first WomendedScotland meeting in Glasgow many years ago and have continued to bump into at Teachmeets and ResearchEd events. Others I have yet to be in the same room with, although I hope to see them on Saturday when we have our first virtual meet up.

The #MIEEScotland team is a different kettle of fish but equally supportive. I first met them online when I was just starting my forrays into using Microsoft One Note. After popping into a digital teachmeet at my children's High school, I realised they were the answer to my prayers, as many of them knew answers to the questions that had been puzzling me since the beginning of "Glow", and if they didn't know the answers, they either had a contact who did, or would try to help me puzzle it out myself. I became hooked on the Microsoft Education Center and was pursuaded to become a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert, in order to help others who were further behind on the digital path to enlightenment. As an experienced teacher of Religious Moral and Philosophical Studies I have no problem with asking questions I know there may not be an answer to and so playing the role of being brave enough to ask the simple questions, grounds the experts who really understand what computing is all about! For 2 years I had been the only MIEE in my local authority but with lockdown the need to become digital educators became all too real.

So my shielding job remit became one of digital education support. I became the teacher who understood how glow logins worked and how to change passwords. I knew how to create and use Teams and was confident to try things out, check with "the experts" and then inform my colleagues. When shielding lifted a little, I ventured first into the garden, then bravely into my stepson's garden (although with my own refreshments and only until I needed to return home for the toilet).In August it was deemed safe to return to school in a reduced capacity so I taught an hour or two each day and dealt withthe online issues of social isolators the rest of the time. Levelling my school's LA to a 4 meant autumn was back at home, but at least I had the freedom of the house. I had encouraged others to apply to be #MIEEs over the summer and so by the time of the second lockdown I was no longer the small questioning voice in the back of the virtual conference room in our #MIEEScotland weekly butties and blether sessions.

As a nomadic English born resident of Scotland I love belonging to these virtual (and in the future f2f again) communities. They are so positive and mutually supportive and in times when many people arefocussing on the "whys", they are rolling up their sleeves and concentrating on the "how do we manage this" and "look what I've discovered". Being a vulnerable person ,whose main purpose in life has been to teach, had I not had them at the other end of a tweet then I might have had a much less positive experience. We celebrated today the arrival of our Team Scotland hoodies, a visual indentification of belonging to a group that doesn't take themselves too seriously but who has made a great inroads into making the future generation digital citizens.

So the last group I want to mention in terms of belonging and vulnerability is the community of care providers and receivers. Teaching care and community engagement like I do, I have established links with many diverse individuals and groups who represent all the individual care needs as well as the different types of care providers. It is very easy to be sanctimonious and patronising of people with care needs when you believe you have none and my aim in teaching these wider achievement courses is to provide pupils insight into the dangers of"othering". With my shielding status I am acutely aware of how this perception is so easily formed and so difficult to overturn. I have watched with admiration the campaign of people with down's syndrome and their families to address the anaomalies in the current Abortion Act; I have followed the plight of those "not" classified as clinically extremely vulnerable to protect themselves long enough to get the vaccine, despite having life limiting conditions or being at serious risk of harm should they catch the virus. I have also experienced the heartache of those closest related to me outside my household, being restricted from seeing their loved ones, who live in residential settings unable to understand day visits could only be through glass. For over a year my mother has not seen her only brother whom she has not been away from for longer than a month in 72 years.

Using a "portal" daily has kept me close to my family, 500 miles away, as my father celebrated his ninetieth birthday whilst also shielding (its genetic), but my uncle cannot understand or relate to a computer screen so is absent from these virtual meetings. We are left with brief telephone calls to hear that he is fine and looking forward to being able to go on holiday to the New Forest , maybe in the summer and sending him personalised photobooks, calendars and chocolate tins to show he is in our thoughts. All around us are individuals and families cut off from their usual community making the best that they can of an awful situation and using social media to try to support each other in the best way that they can. I like, retweet and admire many of these people and they have enriched my teaching of Care this year.

So, (as I start every live lesson I teach) pupils will return to school but I will not be with them. I will continue to be on a screen, at the other end of emails, tweets and WhatsApp messages and will try to enrich my pupils' independent learning skills as they nowapproach blended learning. I hope that when we return to "normal" , whatever that is, I will be able to explain the issues surrounding vulnerability, as a social influence, in terms of affecting individual's life chances, in a more informed way.