This is English

  Thus, a new age has dawned: the post lockdown world where society strains to hold together while remaining apart, at least according to the latest, yet ever-changing, signage: ‘Stay Apart – Stay United’ and where distance learning has evolved into socially distanced learning. Can someone please nudge me awake and tell me this is only an Orwellian nightmare arising from immersion in too much dystopian literature?   Well, the intrigues of semiotics and semantics apart, we’re all ‘doing our best’ to coin a phrase, amid unprecedented circumstances. As teachers, we have certainly had to make rapid adjustments to how we teach as well as what we teach. AQA embraced the new mercurial spirit of the age, having changed their minds on which elements of the Literature syllabus could be discarded within a matter of twenty-four hours. If only one had learned the lessons of the 2020 GCSE grades fiasco, and waited for the inevitable shifting of sands before cancelling the hitherto schedul...

  Over the course of lockdown and remote learning, I found myself tethered to a screen. I imagine this had been the case for much of the country, in one way or another.   Before the monumental shift that occurred in March, I must admit that I had not given my own personal screen time much thought. Although, post-lockdown I have found myself swinging like a pendulum from screen aversion to screen addiction. When we began remote learning back in March, many of the teaching staff became acutely aware of the dependence on screens; we found ourselves reliant on the visual medium and the ability to display and present documents and slideshows to the students. Our sole reliance on this technology as a means of delivering lessons became apparent very quickly. Usually, in lessons, the materials and means are varied enough to ensure that we don’t just stare at the projected image for the duration of the lesson. There are paper copies, miniature whiteboards and other more kinaesthe...