Being a leader in these unique circumstances has been a great challenge for all of us. There have been many barriers that the leaders have had to overcome, but we have all worked together to create different events and challenges to help us stay connected at a time when we are physically apart.
Even though we have been apart, and leadership may have changed, we have found ways to continue to progress with this year's goals. Over the past couple of weeks, the House and Student Leadership Team has brainstormed, planned, written, filmed and organised many creative solutions to help the students and teachers ease into “Remote Learning 2.0”. Here is a list of some activities that have been introduced:
- The Weekly Student Bulletin: This is a guided introduction to the week, and it consists of Prayer, notices, facts and events each week. It is presented during our allocated homeroom time in form of video with lots of animations and pictures.
- The CRCCS Remote Learning Olympics: This is a virtual Olympic competition with a new event commencing every two weeks, this allows students and staff to be engaged in collecting house points for their assigned house. Our current leader board can be found on SEQTA notices.
- Student Leadership Meetings: Every fortnight through Microsoft Teams, we all come together to share ideas and talk about our experiences.
To be a leader in remote learning is a little more difficult. I think that it is an experience that many won’t have and should be considered a privilege. With privilege comes responsibility and with that at Year 8 we have been working on an initiative that focuses on staying connected with our peers. After a focus group meeting ‘The Stay Connected Challenge’ was born. This challenge involves sending in a photo of ourselves wearing a mask or participating in an activity during isolation, so that we can still feel like we are together even though we are apart. The purpose of this was to encourage and foster stronger relationships with our friends, peers across the year level. The photos have been collated and then presented in a video so that the whole CRCCS community can feel a sense of togetherness and belonging and not feel so isolated and alone. This challenge hopes to encourage self-care, spread positivity, hope and act as a reminder that we are all in this together so that not a single person feels left out or alone.