Teaching has always felt like an important job to me, whether or not there’s a pandemic. So I’m glad that the government has decided to define teacher trainees as critical workers: it feels like recognition for the fact that we’re taking the same risks as any qualified teacher. 

We’re willing to go into schools and teach the children. In that way, we’re no different from people who’ve been teaching for several years. 

I’m excited about going back to school in September. I’m looking forward to meeting the children. The school has put a lot of measures in place to protect us, so I’m not concerned. 

We know how we feel about the virus now. At the beginning, we didn’t - it was simply the biggest thing to happen to the world in quite a long time. Now, everyone knows how they feel about it, and understands better how to protect themselves. 

The pupils will be more aware, too. It’s not as though they don’t know there’s a virus. They’re learning to be more clean, and to wash their hands more regularly.

The impact of the coronavirus

I had a bit of a strange route into teaching: I was studying music industry management at university. And, one day, I walked out of a lecture, and someone handed me a leaflet about getting into teaching foreign languages. I’m half-French, and I thought, “I could do that.”

Teaching is an important job. School is what teaches you to be an adult. School teaches you all the necessary skills, so, ideally, you know what to do in terms of - anything, really. If you go off to university and you have household bills to pay, you’d have done the maths and the PSHE to have those kinds of skills. 

As a teacher, you’re preparing pupils for life. That’s what the curriculum is for. 

When lockdown happened, I was stopped from teaching, because my university stopped students from going into schools, in order to protect them. 

Protecting trainee teachers

Obviously, it’s important to protect trainees. My university closed down its campus a few days before they pulled us out of schools. I understand that it was waiting for government guidance but, in those slightly crazy days, it felt a bit like it was protecting other people, but not us. 

A lot of trainees lived with people who were vulnerable, so obviously being in school at that time, when no one knew what was going on, was very scary. 

I have people in my family who are vulnerable, and I was concerned about having to go into school and then not being able to be near them. For a couple of weeks, I also had to isolate from my partner, who I live with. 

All the same, it was quite hard to leave school, especially with limited staff there. I did keep in contact with the school, to see if there was any help that they needed. 

I was working at a special school, so all the children with education, health and care plans stayed in school. It quickly became apparent that, without school, a lot of these children wouldn’t be able to manage. It really highlighted how important school can be for vulnerable children.

Working that bit harder

Of course, all trainees this year have missed out. But my university just created a whole online learning curriculum for us, to catch up with subject knowledge and academic reading. And it made sure we carried on creating lesson plans and talking to other trainees. It was still a really good term, in terms of learning.

I feel like the coronavirus cohort of teachers will actually be gaining something. We’ve had to learn to teach in a different way. We’ll need to be more precise, and to make sure that we’re delivering fun and engaging learning, while not actually being able to do what would traditionally be considered fun and engaging learning. We’re having to think outside the box.

The teachers who trained during Covid-19 may end up being, I hesitate to say “better”, but we’ll have had to work that bit harder to deliver lessons. And we’ll have gained something from that. 

Oriel Delage-Pandeli has just graduated from a teacher-training course at the University of Exeter. Next term, she will take up a post as French teacher and Sendco at Atlantic Academy, in Dorset