Not to mention that sometimes logging into a platform or accessing the messages, emails etc. wasn’t possible.

Every school has been trying to manage this situation in the best (?) possible way, trying to keep up the pace they had when meeting students in their real classrooms. But that’s not possible.

Everyone who has been working online for some time knows that communication channels need to be clearly defined and accessible to all, at all times, that for live classes we have to give (and receive!) clear instructions, safe links, and enough time to connect. Not everyone has super fast internet connections.

Dear everyone – colleague, teachers, educators, friends…. – please adjust the pace of learning, teaching and working!

We had a break (Easter), but after every kind of break we need time to readjust to this all. What seemed to be a sprint at the beginning, is a marathon: therefore we have to lower the pace and focus more on how we can make sure we all get to the finish line!

Last week I have spent more than 23 hours in online meetings, sessions with clients etc. not counting the time to prepare the meetings and sessions and all the admin that comes with running your own business.

I know it is possible to schedule them in a way that there is no overlapping. For my scheduling I use Acuity (but there are many other tools of course!) where I make sure I have buffer zones of 20 minutes that allow me to stretch, get some fresh air, drink or eat something in between meetings. Some of my colleagues spend 4 hours or more in a row, sitting in front of their screens, up to 16 hours a day. That’s simply not healthy! Although I think that I managed to keep up a good pace and manage to organize it all in the best possible way, I feel like my (brain) muscles are sore from this all. In addition to this all, the “emotional” aspect of this all ask our “emotional” muscles (I can’t find a better way to express that “feeling”; please share a better definition of this in the comments) are constantly stretched, highly alert… exhausted.

After several weeks of online work and learning, we should all assess what works, what doesn’t, and speak up! Let colleagues, organizers, managers, teachers, friends etc. know so that we all can “breathe” and go through this in the healthiest way.

For me it is clear that last week was an exception. This week I have scheduled less meetings, I spend more time outdoors and include workouts in my daily schedule. – And I think that my children need the same kind of time offline too. They won’t be learning less, and, honestly: we can’t compare the end of this year’s school year with any other one before. It is different, schools need to find ways to assess the progress and take the circumstance into consideration. Why are some worrying that “this generation will once be labelled with “those who graduated in the COVID19 year””: that’s our reality, that is how it was in other times too (war times come to mind – there are still people who minimize the effect of this pandemic or avoid thinking of it). – So, let’s adjust the pace!

Everything we’re doing needs to be enough. We are all doing our best giving the circumstances and bars should be lowered or somehow changed.

How are your teenagers doing after all these weeks of remote learning?

How does this all affect them, and you?

Please share in the comments.
And I’m off for a break – but will be back in… 20 mins or 30… hm… not sure …

We all have different ways to cope in the many phases we go through not only now, but in any situation. At the moment, we try to find a new normal every day. Some days seem almost surreal, and at times we just wish that the day will be over, other days we wish that certain moments would last longer.

A dear friend shared a picture on facebook, which said that during these times, the days of the week all seem the same. It feels like there is no Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday etc. but only a yesterday, today and tomorrow. Days are very similar, yes, and although we still have meetings and appointments and are aware that the days in the week differ in names and schedules (to some extent), they feel the same because it all happens from the same place: home. At least for some of us.

We are fortunate that this time of isolation gets somehow interrupted by Easter. The Guardian published an article where they ask readers to share how they are celebrating Easter in lockdown, and you can read other newspapers in the Netherlands , Germany, Switzerland, UK etc. In Italy, they indicate where people can follow the messa di Pasqua online.
On TV there are commercials talking about this Easter being different because families can’t meet in person.

Our children seem to need more than ever a sign of hope and normalcy, and Easter is one of the moments in the year that gives us hope every single year.

This year we won’t celebrate it, like planned, in Italy and Switzerland, we’ll celebrate it at home instead. We will decorate our home, have a long skype session on Sunday with our family in Germany and Switzerland, and enjoy the time with each other here. It’s not the first time that we spend Easter without our extended family. For internationals and expats this is nothing new. But still: knowing that you can’t even if you would like to, is what makes a huge difference. The freedom to decide yourself is taken from us this year, and maybe this is why we long for it even more.

We try to keep our minds busy by binge-reading, writing a lot (like I just did in the past days…), and binge-watching Netflix series. Celebrating Easter is becomes a new meaning this year because we long for a new beginning, we long for this all being over soon in the best possible way for our dear ones and for us.

Some parents might think that teenagers don’t really like to celebrate Easter. In Italy there is a saying “Natale con i tuoi, Pasqua con chi vuoi” (“Christmas with your family, Easter with whoever you want (=usually it means friends)”), but this year is different.

All celebrations become more important right now because we are more aware of what it means to celebrate in a more isolated way. Our children miss their friends and family even more… Easter invites to contemplation and there is a positive side of it in celebrating in a more calm and personal way: “In der Ruhe liegt die Kraft” (= the strength is to be found in serenity).

I wish you and your family and friends a healthy Easter, no matter if you celebrate it with your core family, with your partner only (because your children live abroad) or if you are alone this year: bake or cook something delicious, enjoy nature if you can, listen to some good music and enjoy the colors of this season.

Here is a little virtual tour to the Keukenhof here in the Netherlands.

We will watch Andrea Bocelli on Easter Sunday, and his Music for Hope live streaming from the Duomo di Milano – would you like to join us in a virtual way?

How are you celebrating Easter this year?

#wereallinthistogether #stayhomestaysafe

As my husband and I tend to have meetings during lunch hours, we have either an early or a late lunch these days. This allows our three teenagers to make their own (very inventive!) lunches and spend some time among peers, have a chat (or a fight), share their thoughts etc..

Since we all started learning and working from home a few weeks ago, the conversations during breakfasts and dinners changed.

In the first week it was all about what restrictions we would follow. As we were following very closely the news from Italy, we had long discussions about how the situations differed in China, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain, Belgium… and the Netherlands. We ended up agreeing to opt for a stricter rule than the one recommended by the Dutch prime minister, and follow a combination of the Italian and Belgium one , with the sole exception of the 200m rule. – It was not a gesture of solidarity, it was rather the result of our family-common sense or gesunder Menschenverstand .

***

Since our children are on a term break right now and school topics are not first priority during our breakfast and dinner conversations, I notice a great range of topics among which we shift back and forth, quite fast (…too fast sometimes!).

So, one morning, after talking about a movie he saw on Netflix that involves some discoveries at CERN (Lausanne), my son decided to explain Quantum entanglement to his sisters. He mentioned the gloves hidden in two boxes, one sent to the north pole, the other to the south pole… – All this was quite clear and made sense, until one of my daughters said that if the gloves were rubber gloves, that you can wear on both hands, this example would not work… They agreed that the situation in which these gloves are put into the boxes and the kind of gloves needed to be specified.

We all went on, imagining possible other scenarios that made the explanation of quantum entanglement surreal.

The general tone of these breakfast conversations is quite light and we all notice how the current situation is transforming our view on the whole “flatten the curve” approach too. What does “average” even mean? If we compare the calculations that are made in the different countries – we follow news from Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherland, but also form all other countries… – it changes depending on the numbers collected – the official ones – and parameters, and this all differs from country to country, which makes it difficult and sometimes impossible to compare them at all…

Breakfast is the moment where we talk about the current situation.

The other day, one of my daughters said “what if what we are actually living right now, were a dream… and we would wake up one day, but nobody would believe us?” – The next 20 minutes were filled with colorful images, where the children would meet their friends in capsules, hovering over the town, meeting with their classmates in a virtual – but parallel-virtual –room… I guess this was a fantasy over how the remote learning could have been done more realistically, if we had the technology. Face time and synchronous learning are not what they meant. It was more like learning and meeting in VR…

What I found interesting and important to explore was that this whole surreal situation we are thrown in, feels like living in a parallel world, in another dimension.

I understand that our children need time to process, to define for themselves (!) what is “real” and what could be “normal” in the future, they have to find out what makes sense and what not. It’s not for us parents to tell them, it’s for them to explore.

It is difficult for us adults already, even those who have experienced war or similar situations where they had to adjust to a situation that was out of their personal control in the past. – The fact though, that the whole world is affected, gives it a whole new dimension. I would say it is much more bearable because we know that everyone else in the world is going through the same.

Our dinner conversations tend to be quieter than those in the morning. We talk about what we did during the day, what topics we read about. We cook together, share the meal and let the day “sink in”.
I actively stopped conversations to spin around the current situation during evening hours because I noticed that it affected our mood and my personal sleep. I had days where I could hardly sleep. My thoughts spin around the “why’s” and “if’s” at the end of the days and I need something soothing and distracting, like reading books or watching a Netflix series…

It surely didn’t help that my mother in law fell, broke her wrist and had to undergo surgery in the midst of all this. She is fine now, but there were moments where the communication was lost and my husband was very worried. We tried to not make a big deal out of it in front of our children, but they “read the air”, i.e. sense what is going on, so we had a long talk about this. We explained that we can’t just take the car and go to Oma and Opa in Munich or to Grosi and Grospapi in Switzerland, we can’t just go and meet my sister in Ticino, our friends in Italy, France, Spain… These kind of discussions took place in the evenings, until I decided that these are too heavy for evening conversations.

They feel much “lighter” in the morning, when the sun shines and we have a whole day in front of us to talk about it, process the feelings and find ways to make sense of what happens.

What I learned during these days is that we have to have conversations about all that we think, what worries us, what makes us happy, our experience and fear during this time, but all this can’t be randomly shared.

We have to respect each others’ mood and psychological state and avoid a topic if we see that one can’t take it at the moment. We shared tears, we fought, and we shared silence, relaxed and exhausted silence: the whole spectrum of emotions is on our daily menu plan. It can sound scary and overwhelming, but it is important to at least acknowledge it because it helps us to connect and stay connected as a family.

At some point we talked about a series of books and movies about the topics that we tend to talk about and books like The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, or A la Recherche du Temps perdu, and movies like the Matrix etc. (the list was very long…!)

Independence Day comes to mind: although we all are spending 24/7 together, we have to make sure that we don’t disconnect with each other. We have to work on our communication every day

What kind of conversations are you having with your teenagers these days?
What are they – and you – reading at the moment?

Chia Suan Chong, an English language teacher who has made her mark on the field of ELT internationally and who is an inspiration to a lot of teachers, and author of Successful International Communication, held a brilliant webinar Doing the Communicative Approach Online: Motivating students to speak, where she explains how to motivate and keep students motivated when holding online synchronous lessons, i.e. face to face in real time.

Remote learning is not home schooling!

Keeping teenagers focused and engaged when learning remotely is not the same as home schooling!

Some parents had the impression they would need to become teachers in order to help their children keep on track, but this is not the case when we talk about remote learning. During remote learning, teachers and educators are still in charge of providing the necessary input and support to the students.

Although younger children might need some more support from their parents – either to set up the computer or device they need to work with, or with staying focused – older children rather need to learn to not get distracted and get side tracked by chats with friends, gaming, tiktok’ing etc.

Having a clear schedule and routine helped many families make it possible for their children to keep on studying. I know that families with children with special needs had to face many more hurdles! Especially when the parents needed to get some work done at home too. I heard though that some schools who already provided support for these students, also had special educators take care of them remotely.

How to improve even more…

What many schools and teachers need to consider though during COVID19 is that studying at home with all the family under the same roof, requires other routines and demands another kind of concentration from our children. Especially when they need to share the same table, room and sometimes computer…

I observe that schools have adapted the daily schedule and are not requiring children to sit in front of their devices for 6-8 hours in a row, but prefer quality over quantity.

Three or four hours per day is enough for a school aged child and student to study through an online device. – Our children also need time to process what they are learning independently, and they need to get the chance to apply and exercise what they’ve learnt.

And, how Chia Suan Chong mentions in the video, it is important to vary in the style of teaching and keep everyone engaged.

Connecting online … and offline

Teenagers who are familiar with learning online already to some extent, this change in the last weeks hasn’t been a big challenge. Obviously they miss their friends and the daily interactions with them, but they can “meet” via facetime, skype, zoom or other platforms. In times of social distancing in real life, we all use to socialize more online, and we should be thankful for having this option. I am very much aware that this online socializing is not possible for every child around the world right now, and I wonder how they are coping with this. A friend who lives in a country where the internet connection works only every now and then and only during a few hours per day, told me that they are spending time on the balcony, chatting with neighbors and those who take walks in the street. For the rest, they can’t do much more than playing board games, read books and draw, do what I think we all would have done should this pandemic have happened 20 or 25 years ago.

I hope your teenagers are all doing well and found a way to make the best out of this situation. – Keep safe & healthy, and #stayhome.

My questions for you:

• Do you know if the children who need some more support in your school received it also when they had to start studying from home?
• How was this organized?
• What would you suggest could have been done differently in your specific case, for your child and situation, to guarantee remote learning?

Have you also spent hours in planes, trains or car… Did you end up waiting in long lines – in traffic, airports, train stations etc…. – maybe having your journey delayed…?

And of course, while doing all this you took care of your children, pet(s), and made sure everyone is ok before, during and after the journey.

And you did all this to be “there” on time. To meet with family, friends and of course, to have some holiday feeling.

Maybe you expected to share what you’ve done, experienced, what you’re looking forward to… and to have some great conversations with family and friends.

We all have expectations when turning back home for holidays or generally, when visiting our family and friends.

We don’t expect everything to be perfect, but what we wish is that people “see” us and “listen”. As simple as that. We want a confirmation that they are still interested in us, even if we live far (far) away.

In my lifelong experience with this “catching up over summer” I have noticed that we can separate them into two kind of people:

1. People we haven’t met in months or years, but when we meet, it seems like we just met them yesterday. Conversations flow, there is genuine mutual interest in what the other has done, experienced and no judgment, but sincere joy, compassion and empathy. – Usually time flies and we would prefer staying longer.
2. People who ask us how we are doing, listen to what we have to say, but mainly speak about themselves, compare what is “better” or “worse” (and usually what they do and have is “better”…). They involve us in conversations where we can’t really participate (about aunt x and cousin y we don’t know much about…, or about facts that we are not aware of because we live abroad). Most of the conversations are unilateral: they talk, we respond, but their main intent is us to listen to them, mostly agree on what they say (even if we don’t agree…). – When we leave, we are disappointed and relieved at the same time. We haven’t had the chance to share with them what we wanted – mainly because they didn’t want to listen.

It all depends on the way we manage our expectations when we  meet with family and friends. When we only have a few hours to spend together, we won’t share all the details of our last project. We will rather focus on some important details we want to share.

Also, we need to translate them in a way that our family and friends can understand them – I’m not talking about translating them into another language (that too, sometimes) but to translate them in words they understand, that are part of their vocabulary and that they can relate to. When we talk about our children, the school systems are different, the curricula and the languages are different. When we talk about my job, the clients and expectations are different.

Tips on how to have meaningful conversations

For me it is important to have meaningful conversations. I don’t like to spend the whole time of a visit with small talk, or talking about issues that have been mentioned the year before, or that come up at each visit.

A meaningful conversation for me is when I have the feeling that the other person listens to what I say, and I can to listen to her (find my post about the importance to listening here). I call it being in the “us-zone” for a moment. This “us-zone” is where we meet, once a year, and where we work on our relationship. That is where we grow together and find our common ground – our common interests, what we agree on, what we like, what makes us happy and helps us also look forward to meeting again.

It might sound superficial, but when time is short, we don’t want to spend it arguing or discussing about the frustration one person has about an issue etc.. When someone expresses his frustration about something, I tend to let him blow off steam, and refocus on something else.

I have found it very useful to prepare 3 to 5 subjects that I want to share at each visit. These need to be things I want to share to an extent that doesn’t require long explanations as the attention span from both sides is usually quite short when there are time constraints, so, in order not to leave frustrated in the middle of a conversation, I prefer keeping it short.

As a child I have experienced many times that during a visit nobody really wanted to talk with me. Especially when nobody was interested in my opinion, I felt excluded and “not seen”. My grandfather was the only one who would take the time to sit with me and ask me many questions about what I think, what I’m interested in etc.. Most of the time, others (grown ups) decided about the subjects and I was only the listener. – I still get bored very quickly when someone else is doing the talking and expects others only to listen. In this case, today, I don’t hesitate to leave a table… But we can avoid these situations by re-directing the attention to another topic, or by asking open questions.

I advise my children to think about 3 to 5 things they want to share with family and friends, and to share the most important one first. This way they learn to take the initiative to start a conversation (which fosters their conversation skills), or to re-direct a conversation to a subject that interests them, which can lead to a greater conversation where family and friends can discover facets of our children they would have missed otherwise.

There are also some topics we want to avoid: those that are repeated at every visit, that make us upset, or that we just don’t want to talk about for some reason. – This requires some preparation too, as sometimes these topics pop up from nowhere and tend to take over. It’s good to have a strategy to end the conversation and re-direct it to a topic that everyone enjoys…

What is your experience with conversations with family and friends?

Do you have some strategies to make sure your conversations are meaningful?

Please share in the comments here below.

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