Dream School

Imagine a world where children wake up in the morning, put on their uniforms and walk off to school. Only this isn’t school as you know it. This is a green school. Solar panels line the double-glazed windowpanes. You can just about see a thriving roof garden built by the kids that flourishes at the top. Part mini herb garden, part pollinator patch, part CO2 guzzling trees, part succulent-crowded greenhouse. As you enter the double doors you can choose between three floors: child psychology, learning and disability.

On one level there’s a real aquarium with near-extinct marine species lining the wall and ceiling. Another is covered in ‘moss writing’, a recent trend that many artists have been graffitiing with empowering quotes written in moss across city buildings. The third is overflowing with playful cartoons drawn by the children themselves. In each room is a bin for clothes to be given to charity shops. Eco-friendly school supplies like acid-free glue sticks are used. Teachers use whiteboards rather than technology.

One special part of this school is that it supports working single mothers by running cooking courses in the Food and Nutrition classrooms during the holidays. The building also includes a lecture room where invited speakers deliver interactive programs, often about mental health issues such as anxiety. Children can decide whether to learn/be counselled with a group in a class or on their own.

What is this haven, you ask? Well, after the backlash of COVID-19 lockdown’s remote learning scheme, schools like this have been introduced all over the country in an attempt to re-wild the world. Learning now is not based around academia, or your grades. Here kids learn about the ways of Mother Nature and how to care for her. They learn about how to forage for berries. They learn about planting trees in forests and watching them grow. They learn about how to transform plastic waste into useful materials.

Although distance teaching ultimately failed, there were some positive parts. I should know. I had just turned fourteen when the coronavirus first struck and sent rolling waves of hysteria everywhere. I was one of the 7,823,429,400 people who were forced into lockdown at their homes with their families. I woke up late every morning, put on some comfy clothes and walked over to the seat at my desk.

It was obviously really strange at first: in my journal for the 21st of March 2020, I wrote simply ‘in disbelief that schools could be shut until next year’. Little did I know it would end up being a lot longer. But then again, I do remember being able to work at my own pace and learn more independently. Plus, with this way I could work with only my own chosen classmates, through communicating apps like FaceTime.

However I do also recall the slight feeling of loneliness and isolation as I worked. Without my classmates, and actually being in a learning atmosphere, it could be hard to motivate yourself. Although learning is active, those students who are less enthusiastic might take the opportunity to do no work whatsoever and waste valuable work that they would just have

to catch up on as exams grow nearer. Unprecedented. Challenging. Strange. These three words were the ones mentioned most when people talked about Covid. The ones I quoted most as I chronicled each calibre of the Coronavirus. And we were actually expected to learn and work throughout this mad chaos of a world, which almost seemed post-apocalyptic at the time.

The virus was a rocket, rapidly accelerating, racing, ramping up – we needed to outpace it in our response. Within a few weeks we were catapulted from the familiarity of Earth’s surroundings into outer space, into completely unchartered territory. As astronauts, we were forced to adapt to the gravity of that situation with lightning speed. We donned our spacesuits every day in case the outside atmosphere was poisonous. And why? We bid goodbye to easy life on Earth, to physically seeing our friends, to watching the glowing stars from a long distance, so easily.

I must admit I missed the mundane colours of normality over the pure blackness of the night, splattered sparsely with stars just like when you flick white paint onto an inky canvas, from the rocket window. Distraction is another huge possibility because our phones are constantly by our sides, slowly coaxing us into picking it up and opening the social media apps. Any ‘ping’ notification can cause us to slide into that cycle of texts and posts and filters.

However, with remote learning you had the vast minefield of the Internet right at your fingertips, a lavish abundance brimming with resources for any extra research on any subject matter. You can forget about sitting awkwardly, suffering from back pain and ill-fitting uniforms now that it’s all your timing, your pace, your choice. That’s the key here: choice. YOU make the decisions about your learning. YOU decide which method you will follow. YOU decide when to turn your work in. But the teachers guide you in your self-education.

This brings up the question: what should we be teaching our kids? I say they ought to be learning how to fulfil our natural instincts, preserving and protecting its sacred wildlife, understanding its needs, repairing its open wounds. Mother Earth is dying, and if the children do know CPR, they’re the ones who will die with it. Green schooling is necessary for both the future of humanity, and the ground we need to live.