Superpowers

By Dr Adrian Johnson, Deputy Principal Head of Secondary School

I’m guessing I was not the only child who assumed the role of their favourite superhero from time to time. I can recall diving into the local public pool with my arms extended alongside my body, elbows bent at right angles, imaging I was Astro Boy flying through the air and water. Sometimes I adopted such superpowers as part of a game with my mates; or there were times when particular superpowers were assumed to deal with the situation at hand. Oh, to be invisible or as strong as Superman, when required!

Over the past few months, we’ve all needed to draw on our ‘superpowers’ as we’ve dealt with lockdowns and the impact this has wrought on our personal and professional lives. I was living in the UK, in 2009, when the Swine Influenza Pandemic was declared by the World Health Organisation – a disease caused by the N1H1 influenza virus. Based on that experience, which had limited impact on the school in which I was teaching, I recall saying to a group of students at Radford in February last year: ‘This will all blow over in a couple of months’. How wrong I was!

Despite the events of the past 18 months, I sensed a change as we have welcomed our Year 12s back onto campus at the start of Term 4. There has been a palpable sense of gratitude from all concerned as I have talked to physically distanced, of course, students these past two weeks – much more so than when we emerged from lockdown last year. And in those conversations with students from the Class of 2021, there’s a resoluteness, now, that they are going to finish their year and do so with a flourish.

Schools are places where routine reigns; they aren’t renowned for being nimble, where people respond quickly to calls for change. Yet we have. I have been astonished by our collective capacity to adapt. A few examples to illustrate the point: lessons continued online – and differentiated learning was maintained, break-out groups had discussions and presentations made to the class, assessment tasks were completed, marked and feedback given, Parent-Teacher-Student Conversations conducted via Teams … I could go on. Every single aspect of my colleagues’ craft has been impacted. And they have learnt new skills and adapted, and they have done all this because they cared about their students.

I am in awe of the teachers and the other staff who support them at Radford.

But it hasn’t been just us who have adopted superpowers during this once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. We owe a deep sense of gratitude to our students and their parents and caregivers who have supported online learning in their homes. I can’t begin to imagine what that has been like for working people with young families. The ‘novelty’ of lockdown, if there’s such a thing, certainly wore off quickly in the Johnson household.

As a foundation member of the Gold Coast Suns I am, officially, an AFL tragic. And whilst my team didn’t make it to that game on the last Saturday in September, and probably will not for many years to come(!), I certainly watched the Grand Final. Those who witnessed that game will, no doubt, remember an extraordinary period of 17 minutes when the Demons went from 19 points down to drawing 24 points ahead of the Bulldogs. Whilst the long-suffering Melbourne fans dared not to dream, just in case, with every minute of the fourth quarter their team knew they had the game won. And it is that sense of: ‘we’ve got this’ I sensed in our returning students.

As the ‘White Duke’, David Bowie, sang: We can be heroes.