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B RILLIA NT- ON LIN E SEP TEM B ER 2021
TEENAGE LOCKDOWNS, ROCK N’ ROLL AND HOMESCHOOLING DURING THE PANDEMIC ✦ Quan-Teenager, Lola Willows in lockdown
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hat’s it like being home-schooled during the pandemic and how are teenagers really coping with being locked down with their parents. We spoke to Lola Willows about what it’s like being a teenager in lockdown. Lola Willows started High School last year. It was a brand-new school, with brand new teachers and brandnew students. It was also completely overwhelming. Lola had come from the small and protective school environment on offer at the Port Macquarie Adventist School, which had provided an idyllic Primary School experience. Adjusting to a large High School was going to be hard considering the Year 7 class alone was bigger than Lola’s whole previous school, and then came the pandemic. Transitioning to online learning during the first wave saw the style of remote learning pivoting twice, and following a year of turmoil, integration, hard work and resilience building, by the end of the year, Lola had finally found her crew and was starting to enjoy going to school. Fast forward to this year, Year 8, and the country enters its unprecedented distance learning experiment for the second time, there’s been a growing contingent of students who’ve found themselves enjoying their cyberspace syllabus as much as the physical version. We spoke to Lola Willows about homeschooling and what it’s like being stuck at home as a teenager.
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Lola Willows homeschooling during the COVID-19 pandemic.
How are you finding this lockdown, Lola? At first, I was really excited to hear that I wouldn’t be attending school and that I would be homeschooled for a couple of weeks. Year 8 is much harder than year 7, so I thought it would be like a little break and I could work at my own pace. As the weeks go by, I’m not enjoying it so much anymore. I’m really missing my friends and I’m finding the amount of work I’m receiving overwhelming. I am missing being able to ask
questions in the classroom. At Regional High School I am offered homework support and I miss that. I go to Kip McGrath every Wednesday to help with Maths and that is now online also. I enjoy doing the Zoom classes and must check in with my teachers and they are all really supportive. We can email questions and it’s really streamlined. They have just offered me online homework support, so that’s a big relief. I still miss connecting with friends and working on school projects together.
