I always used to love sitting quietly in my classroom for 10 minutes at the end of the day’s lessons. Hearing children chatting and laughing through the classroom window as they head to the buses. The sun slinking through the windows and me with a sore voice from teaching all day. Resting my feet and reflecting on what I did well and what I needed to address the next time. A pile of jotters to mark. Telling myself, “I’ll get to those later.” Feeling dog tired.

How cruel that this has been denied to us all this term. And now it feels brilliant to be back in school, teaching face-to-face: something that seemed so obvious and fundamental that I didn’t appreciate how good it was until it was no longer an option.

One thing must be made clear - schools have not been closed. The media and politicians have to recognise this. Teachers have not been off work and pupils have not stopped learning. Remote schooling has been a challenge I never expected to face when I trained for this job. And it’s not something I will be keen to rush back into. All the key tenets of good learning - motivation, pace, differentiation - are all made exponentially harder at a distance.

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I’m sure I’m not alone among my colleagues in Scotland to be absolutely buzzing to be back working in the school building this week. There is still an element of blending the learning. It is not business as usual yet. To hear the jostling in corridors and the scratch of pencil on paper is like listening to a favourite old song. And it’s comforting to be dictated to by the bell. In my school, small class sizes and creative timetabling have allowed us to get back to something like normality already.

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It’s so incredible to see the pupils again. Interacting with them is the thing I value most in my job. And they have changed over these months. Taller and hairier and maybe a little more reflective. Living through something like this must have impacted their maturity. It’s going to be years before we can grasp the full scale of the lockdown’s influence on their development.

I wanted to get back to basics. To embrace some retro values. I have given new jotters out and we are handwriting! Joined up handwriting, mistakes rubbed out, pencils sharpened. It is so tactile and I love it. I never want to see Microsoft Teams again. Maybe it can be developed for homework assignments, and I do appreciate all the hard work that has gone into the training and establishment of it across the country.

The senior pupils are so focused on their assessment opportunities coming up after Easter. For them, it’s a chance to experience something normal and tangible that their older siblings and parents all went through. The younger ones are giddy just to have company. To talk and share and laugh with their friends. Such simple things that have been denied them these long months.

A bunch of girls laughed in my classroom, speaking over the top of one another and none of them getting a word in. They told me they were high on the sugar of social interaction! There are hard and good days ahead. For now, the sun is out and the bell is ringing in another class of children.

Alan Gillespie is principal teacher of English at Fernhill School in Glasgow