Important Skills and Lessons Learned During CSL

By Matt Conroy, Secondary Social and Emotional Counsellor

Isincerely hope you are reading this article looking back on an extended period of Continuing Student Learning and that those experiences are becoming a distant memory. As a parent, I remember longing for those days to end and the resumption of day to day, face to face teaching. There was a feeling that excessive screen time and social isolation was having a detrimental impact on our sons and daughters.

Whilst I am relieved that we have returned to a degree of normality and I genuinely believe that in-school teaching trumps CSL in very many regards. I think there were some advantages that helped our students and maybe it will be possible to revisit some of them again in the future:

Sleep – Wake ups were later as a result of not having to travel to school.

It is scientifically proven that teenagers need more sleep and one possible benefit of the CSL structure may have been additional shut-eye.

Life Skills – In my work as a counsellor, I actively spoke to many students who were taking responsibility for themselves. Cooking their own breakfast and lunch, maybe even preparing meals for siblings too. These skills were often supplemented with creative lessons which promoted cooking in the home and I am sure students will have a greater repertoire of meals they can make than they ever would when reliant on school meals and the snack bar.

Organisation – For me and my wife there were days when we both had to be at work and as such our children spent an increased amount of time home alone. It was amazing to see how they took responsibility for their time, used a watch and set alarms to ensure they were present for lessons on time. They gave themselves time to eat breakfast, be ready for registration organised with what they need. They developed an autonomy in how they structured their day that does not exist in school when they are told where to go, when to go and what to do.

Independence – I genuinely feel that the ability to focus without adults and teachers hovering in the background will make these students better learners and, more importantly, better workers going into the adult world. Developing independent learners is a key ethos at Bangkok Patana and CSL offered an unexpected route for students to take much greater responsibility for their own learning. Along with independence came the opportunity for flexibility, students had much more choice of how to structure their day with increased freetime after school to allocate their time for homework, relaxation and exercise.

Future Skills – There is no doubt that IT skills have blossomed as a result of CSL and it is staggering what students of an incredibly young age have achieved using a wide array of IT programmes including Teams, Google Drive, MathsPad and Powerpoint. These students are now incredibly well placed to enter an inter-connected work place that will feature an increased element of remote work and collaboration.

Confidence – Some students genuinely thrived in a remote learning environment. There is a growing body of evidence to show that shy kids, hyperactive kids and highly creative students may have done better with remote learning than in the physical classroom. For those students for whom social santion might be fraught with anxiety, it is possible to envisage that a CSL environment was more conducive to them contributing and collaborating in lessons. Also, having a ‘chat’ option to discretely message a teacher and ask for help without drawing the attention of the whole class may have assisted student in asking for help.

Resilience and Adaptability – Looking back I think we need to give all our students a great deal of credit for overcoming the extended period of CSL. Evidence suggests that we all need a degree of stability and certainly in our lives to prosper. The last eighteen months have given little opportunity for that; but through the creativity and ingenuity of remote learning, students were able to access a stability of education and maintain contact with friends and peers through MS Teams.

I do feel the need to acknowledge that we have been very fortunate within the Bangkok Patana community to live in an environment where our students have had access to safe homes, with plentiful food and access to high quality IT. These benefits will not have been mirrored everywhere.

Moving forward, I sincerely hope that we do not totally forget about CSL. Whilst it may not be a successful model for an extended period of teaching, an occasional day of remote learning within an academic year might actually offer some benefits.