Community News | Canberra
Canberra In Focus: Radford College - building stronger connections In conversation with Ms Karen Mahar, Deputy Head Junior School
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By: Rajni Ghai Malhotra
he pandemic hit us over a year ago bringing with it changes to almost every sphere of our lives. One such sector is Education. In a matter of days, schools were shut down and teachers had moved to providing online lessons to students. Adapting to learning remotely and staying connected despite the lockdown were only a part of the many challenges that schools were faced with. Recently, I had the opportunity to have a conversation with Karen Mahar, Deputy Head of Junior School at Radford College, about the impact of COVID-19 on students and their learning during the past year. It was an interesting conversation that led to discussion on the pivotal role of schools in general, and Radford College in particular, on how they promote strong connections and a safe environment for students to feel a strong sense of identity within the community, helping them grow with a greater awareness of the world they live in. What follows are snippets from the conversation and a close look at some of the key events in the Radford Calendar that make the school the happy healthy community that students take pride to be part of.
What have been the key take aways (learning points) from the past year
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of COVID induced changes?
With the first anniversary of the restrictions associated with the outbreak of COVID – 19, it seems timely to reflect on lessons learnt as members of Radford and as part of larger communities, including local national and international. It was Charles Darwin who was first quoted as saying “In the long history of humankind (and animal kind too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” Communities throughout the world have been affected in different ways. Thankfully, for our community, it would seem things have been as good as they could have been. What has been apparent over the past 14
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months is the significance of human connection, kindness and empathy towards one another, both for mental and physical health. While we promote the importance of self belief, self esteem and self interest, a bigger picture on life reveals the greater value of collaboration with others in achieving common goals and objectives and the value of participation in building self worth as a consequence. In Australia our remote location, being isolated from other countries; our predominantly well educated population; relatively low population densities and strongly connected communities all proved enormous advantages in successfully combating any COVID outbreaks. If we are to genuinely believe the anecdote, ‘humans will show their true colours during
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