This morning we had a crew session where each student brought along a parent to join our crew hangout…. a bit like bring your child to work day…..! Most students managed to come along with a parent in toe, though it seemed much to their embarrassment.

I thought this was a great opportunity for parents to get a taste of what we do in crew and allow them to engage in a crew session. Obviously crew is a little different on a hangout to when we are all sat in our circle at school but never the less we have still managed to have 3 sessions a week at 9.30am since lockdown!

During this period these have developed into an academic crew on Monday morning, a compulsory crew on Wednesday morning and then an end of the week a check in on Friday morning.

Today I began by giving parents a brief overview of a normal crew session – registration, student notices, equipment check,…. yes…. students and parents were asked to bring pen and paper so they were prepared however some naughty parents were seen scuttling off to get them…. yes I saw you! lol

Then we had our checkin or as we call it in Hahn, ‘Checkin Chicken’. I’m not sure how or when this became established, but I think its the ‘role’ of the students eyes when i say it that made me think, it’s a keeper!

After check in we moved onto our current topic. In school this would include academics, PSHE, reading, current news articles etc but since lockdown we’ve focused on our studies and how we can support each other.

Our current topic ‘Habits’ kicked off last week when i asked them all to name one bad habit they have. There was a range of different answers from biting nails, eating too much, playing on games too long and leaving windows open. I went through the list and asked parents to guess which answer belonged to their child. I was a little worried this might have caused a few family arguments but actually they did pretty well at guessing correctly, well done mums n dads!

This week is about developing good habits which we know is not easy. However there are certain skills, knowledge and resources we can use to help us develop good practises and establishing them into habits.

While we are all at home studying without our teachers and peers to in the same room to support us and our other usual school structures we need to be able to develop new ways of creating an environment that is going to help us study and we’ve been expected to adapt really quickly.

At home there are so many distractions, so many other things we need to do or would rather do, no teacher by our side to ask for immediate help or no friends to give us a quick nudge to tell us to get on with our work. We need to find a new support system and identify what things work and what things don’t. We can actually use this time during CV19 to learn more about ourselves in terms of self motivation, self discipline, accessing resources and what else can we do to become leaders of our own learning.

I asked each student to identify one new habit that they would like to develop to help them improve studying at home that parents could support them in doing each day.  Here is Hahn’s list:

James, to work on Maths every day

Rhys, to go to bed by 11pm

Cara, spread her work load out

Sam, get to bed before 11pm

Sophie, share her thoughts more

Jibba, make a planner to organise his time better

Maddi, remember to submit her work

Sureya & Tom, to do 1/2 hr English & 1/2 hour maths every day

Jon, to reduce his distractions

Next week we will discuss ‘what worked well’ and ‘Even better if’ to continue developing these new habits.

Lastly we did a quick ‘check out’ by asking parents to name one thing they were proud of their son or daughter for during the lockdown. There were some lovely answers from making parents cups of tea each day, exercising everyday, getting work submitted on time, not complaining about lockdown, taking the dog out and helping around the house…

What a fantastic crew I have and I’m really proud of all of them and I thank each of them for making my mornings at school enjoyable although sometimes slightly challenging. ; )

I can’t wait to see you all in school again!