Mrs Bufton-Green's blog - change and resilience

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.” Charles Darwin.

I have come to accept that the only certain in life is that change is constant. Over the last year, we have undeniably been experiencing a period of rapid change, as we flex and flow in response to the pandemic. Our personal and professional lives have been affected in many different ways and we have all had to demonstrate resilience through this period.

When we think about resilience, we typically imagine bouncing back from a major hardship, however, I see resilience as a much more nuanced definition, as the ability to adapt to a complex change. This is why it is important that we cultivate resilience as an ongoing skill for our children and staff.

Yet again being thrust into a national lockdown determined our need to draw upon our resilience skills in order to quickly adapt and prepare for another period of remote learning. Because the staff team at Gateway School know each other well they know how best to utilise everybody’s strengths and skill sets to bring together the necessary components for the excellent and holistic remote curriculum provided. Within twenty-four hours the whole curriculum had been taken online and the children were accessing the next best experience to actually being in the classroom. Thanks to the advancements in technology the children were still able to be taught by their teachers in a live Google classroom alongside their peers from their own homes.

Adapting once again to this mode of learning and teaching is a necessary response in order to ensure that our children continue to progress and grow. In time, we will look back on this period and reflect positively about the enormous achievements in academic growth. but also in personal growth too. We have stretched the muscles of teamwork, collaboration, communication, independence, problem-solving, creativity and many more and are all much stronger for it. These enhanced skills will continue to support all of our future learning journeys and approach to life too.

Thank you and well done to the whole Gateway School community for your ability to flex and adapt to the changes already underway and for those that are yet to come. ‘Together we can’ and will get through this.