They resisted (IV) | The return to school of primary school students who wrote a diary during confinement

(Six months have passed since the lockdown ended and we began, in phases, the return to "the new normal." With this series, They Resisted, we want to remember the people and stories, many of them viral, that helped us to weather the first wave of the pandemic).

During the total confinement by the coronavirus, thousands of teachers had to readjust their classes to continue teaching their students remotely.

With the aim of "fixing and photographing that moment in time", Raúl Rubio, a teacher at the Miguel Hernández de Alcorcón public school (Madrid), asked his students, aged nine and ten, to tell through drawings and writings how they felt.

The contributions of all the children were compiled in

, a book in digital format to share with parents and other teachers, which we echoed on April 5 in this news.

Most of the students told of their concern about the coronavirus and what their daily routine was: their homework, how and what they played, the applause at 8:00 p.m., how much they missed their grandparents ...

Now that six months have passed since the harshest confinement measures were lifted, we have contacted Raúl Rubio to find out how the reunion with his students and the return to the classroom has been.

According to the teacher, the students missed the face-to-face a lot because "they are fed up with the new technologies and they really want to talk."

"When I now ask them what they remember about confinement, many highlight something that they already reflected in

: boredom," explains the teacher.

One of the entries in this diary, for example, included the following statement: "Conclusion: At first I thought this was like a vacation. After a few days I realized that this was going to be hard."

But the students also knew how to get positive things out of the confinement, as explained by the teacher: "A student told me that it has allowed her to realize all the work her mother does. Other students also value that confinement positively, but because they say they loved not getting up early and not having so many homework. "

Regarding

project

, Rubio highlights that it helped the children of the Miguel Hernández center to connect even more with their families.

"It has allowed them to locate their feelings and channel them. At the same time, their parents have thus been able to realize what their children felt and how they expressed it," says the teacher.

Another advantage of

was that it allowed Rubio to check the progress of his students.

"Perhaps there are people who read certain texts and feel nothing, but I play with the advantage of knowing who writes them and they reach me deeper," says Rubio.

Specifically, he highlights two writings that caught his attention.

In one of them, a student details how she has tried "not to nag" and occupy her time doing many activities.

In the second text selected by the teacher, another student tells how what she learned from her first week of confinement was "nothing, boredom."

The mother of this minor contacted the teacher to tell him that she did not understand where these impressions came from.

"I told her to respect what she was thinking and stop to understand her, she is a very creative and restless student," she says.

Confinement for this teacher has been, however, much more "bittersweet" than for most of his students.

Rubio lost his father during confinement, who died of covid-19.

Although this has been a hard drink for both him and his family, he still highlights: "This time has been a real discovery with my partner and my children. Seeing how they supported me and how we respected our spaces has been incredible."

The work, although at times it has been overwhelming due to all the material that had to be re-adapted, has also been "a gift" at times.

"With projects like

the kids give you back masterpieces of emotions and feelings. You get to see through their eyes and that is a magical thing," says the teacher.

Quarantine in the new course

The comments that the teacher received on this project has made him want to repeat it again throughout this course in the subject of Language.

"We are going to continue talking about emotions and what we feel, because everything fits in a diary."

This

activity

, which will be carried out every week, starts from the same premise as before: a phrase or word proposed by the teacher that allows students to freely develop a writing, without further guidelines from the teacher.

The first sentence that the students had to complete during confinement, for example, was: "I have been home for more than a week and from this experience I have learned ...".

Although this course will be different nuances.

"There are many students who no longer want it to be public because they are more embarrassed to show their feelings," says Rubio.

During the confinement, the

activity

was directed at fourth grade students, to whom Rubio taught Language and Mathematics.

This year, already in fifth grade, Rubio will teach mathematics to everyone, but will only teach language to one of the classes.

"The Community of Madrid dictated that the ratio of the classrooms had to be a maximum of 20 people, so now we have gone from being two classes to three," explains Rubio.

This reduction in the ratio of students per classroom is one of the measures typical of this atypical school year, marked by masks and social distance due to the coronavirus.

This year the development of content is being a little slower because students and teachers have had to learn many new sanitary measures.

The minors now enter in a staggered way according to the class to which they belong, and they have to follow hygiene guidelines such as not going to the bathroom together, frequent hand washing, temperature taking and, of course, wearing a mask.

Even so, Rubio maintains: "The children have understood it perfectly, much better than the older ones. They do not remove their masks, they do not fiddle around and they do not complain. They are giving us a lesson in coexistence, knowing how to be and respecting the rules".

One of the drawings that were part of the original activity

Despite so many precautions, one of the three classes Rubio teaches this year has had to be confined for a few days.

"On Thursday, October 22, the parents of a student notified that their son had tested positive. As we are a stable group of coexistence we have had to spend a ten-day quarantine," explains the teacher.

This news surprised and worried the students, who - although like the teacher feared that this circumstance could occur at some point - did not expect it to be so at the beginning of the course.

"Above all they were afraid of giving symptoms and infecting their grandparents or a relative," says Rubio.

Professor Rubio, together with another colleague from the center, has tried to make this circumstance affect the learning of his students as little as possible.

To do this, he has divided his 20 students into groups of 5, to whom he gave distance classes as personalized as possible.

"We have tried to cover the essentials, giving what we gave in class but adapted", he explains.

One of the activities that they have developed in this time is precisely that of

, where the minors have told this brief quarantine under the following premise: "The day I found out that they were going to confine us I felt that ...".

"Most showed concern but there have also been students who have tried to get the positive. As they missed each other so much some have even stayed to play dolls by video call," says the teacher.

Currently, both students and teachers have returned to the classroom after this ten-day confinement, except for the one affected by the covid, since it still continues to test positive.

The return to classes has been a relief for Rubio, since he maintains that "online teaching is a substitute. Where they really learn is face-to-face."

With this last experience, and in view of the fact that perhaps in the future a second quarantine such as the one in March may be decreed, the teacher has an idea of ​​a project in case it is finally produced: a photographic personal diary that is a

of what happens in one day from the window of his students.

Despite the difficulties inherent to confinement and boredom and the concern that some minors complained about, the teacher highlights the families' effort to preserve the children's state of mind.

"Fortunately, they have all been very taken in by their parents on an emotional level, I don't think a trauma was created from this experience," he explains.

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