International schools in Thailand were finally given permission to reopen fully from 15 June, so long as strict rules and regulation were followed, which included:

• Face masks to be worn, always.
• Classrooms to be ventilated.
• Temperature checks to be taken upon entry to school.
• Social distancing of one metre to be always maintained.

Here at Harrow International School Bangkok, we have implemented all of the above (and more).

But the one that we have found to be the trickiest and that has tested our understanding of what is possible with all ages of children is keeping the children socially distanced at all times.

Maintaining the new norm

Week one was brilliant.

Children were drilled and practised. They watched how-to videos on social distancing and teachers were on top of the guidance, issuing constant reminders.

However, once the initial re-introduction had passed, children began to slip in their commitment to social distancing and, to be honest, so did the adults.

Why did this happen?

Pupils became more comfortable in their surroundings; they remembered that school is a safe place to be. What they also did was…be children.

Children thrive on social interaction, on collaborative play and being with others meaning that pushing the boundaries and breaking the norm was them just being normal (in an abnormal world).  

In the classrooms, children began to find themselves standing up and walking to the front to see the teacher, then having to be reminded to sit back down.

Students would stand up to get a drink, get a resource and then remember that they were not supposed to be doing this.

It’s not just in the classroom either.

For example, when we tried to allow pupils to play basketball at breaktime, each with their own ball, we discovered they simply cannot stop themselves from joining in with someone else.

Throwing a ball back to a friend, trying to stop someone else from scoring, and so on - all of these things are normal but have to be stopped. 

Zombies and bubbles

Moving around school is an issue too.

We tried to establish a free-flow pattern, a model where a teacher would simply instruct the children of the intended destination and the children would follow having been released by the support adults to support social distancing.

What we discovered was that no matter how rigorous this was, the children always ended up in a line.

And, when social distancing, lines are not great as if a child stops, it creates a group. If a child walks too fast, it creates a group. If a child wanders to the wrong side of the one-way, it creates a group.

Put simply, it is hard and the number of reminders heard each day is large and growing.

It is not that students do not want to; it is that they forget: their mind wanders or they are thinking about talking to a friend and end up walking side by side doing what all people do, chatting to a friend.

Is this bad? No, but it’s not appropriate right now. And this is hard for children to understand.

So we have implemented the “zombie walk” - whereby children walk with their arms in front of them to keep a social distance - and the “bubble walk”, whereby children walk moving their arms side to side to keep a social distance.

It’s a fun way of keeping rules that, at any other time, it would unnatural to try to enforce on children.

Dining dilemmas

In the dining hall, social distance spots are on the floor to show students where to wait. Once a child moves forwards, the next child can move up to the next spot.

This creates great entertainment as it becomes a game of follow the leader but played with 120 students waiting for food.

Some forget to move, some move too soon and jump on the person in front. Some jump the wrong way and end up on the one-way system, creating havoc for all around.

We have managed to keep it working, but in part only because the number of staff we have had to place on duty has dramatically increased, simply to monitor what is fast becoming the largest game of magical stepping stones ever seen.

Consistency rules

Despite all these challenges, it is crucial we found a way we could maintain our rigour in relation to social distancing.

Most fundamentally, we did this by reminding ourselves of what is necessary, ensuring that we role model what is required and reiterating to all involved what we always have to have in mind: that these procedures are for the benefit of all in our community and anything less could put people at risk.

This is the key: adults have to be consistent, adults have to keep reiterating the messages and adults have to be the ones to role-model the behaviour.

These measures may not be perfect, but it is certainly better to have our children in school, and this allows them to return to something that resembles normality.

Mike Godwin is head of pre-prep phase (Years 1-5) at Harrow International School Bangkok