by Corona time… A lot of things happen in school although the pupils stay at home or maybe even because of that. What are we doing in Heinrich-Böll-Schule to strengthen relationships between pupils, families and teachers in times which don’t allow us to meet in school, to talk eye-in-eye, to hug each other for consolation or encouraging, to do a lot of relationship relevant activities? The most important activity we do now is staying in contact. Teachers call all families every week and if necessary even more often. They speak about learning tasks but much more about situations in families and how people could deal with it. But even more important… they listen to the severe worries parents often have got and let them know that they are not alone and forgotten. Children get a lot of letters and emails of their teachers. They get friendly greetings or funny and interesting ideas what they can do all the time they need to stay at home. Beside sheets and books for learning some classes are creating digital materials such as small films where children can see their teachers who are teaching their subjects. They also get powerpoints to learn in an interactive way. Parents send photos, greetings and films back to teachers which show active kids while learning, painting, playing or tinkering. At the beginning of the Easter holidays we used our Erasmus experience with creating collages and asked the families for photos of “children’s home office”. All class teams created collages out of them and we published a common Easter greeting on our website.
Our website is our information portal. We give our very best to bring all important informations to our parents in a correct and at the same time understandable way. We give hints and ideas how to deal with home schooling and where families can find help in emergency case.
Keeping relationships strong between families and school is the main contentual object of our work during these times. For our pupils it is quite difficult to understand what is going on in the world. And they can’t really live a relationship without physical closeness. Therefore strong parents are the most important and only existing aspect for their wellbeing in the moment. All teachers in our school support families as much as they can and try to carry the spirit of our Erasmus project: “All together” into families.
