Dear readers of the PILGRIM newsletter,
Unfortunately, schools cannot begin their normal operations as hoped in January. The daily learning needed for students of all ages in schools under the guidance of their teachers is not possible until the semester break in February 2021, Lock-Down 3 has been extended.
How much more patience do we all need until we can live in normalcy?
Families continue to be extremely challenged. Never has it been so dramatically brought home to us as a society that the family is the “nucleus of the state.” Childhood is spent in families, the first nurturing of children takes place in families. Especially now, families offer protection to their children.
This is followed by elementary childcare facilities and, in continuation, by schools. The staff in kindergartens, places of elementary education, is currently exposed to hard working conditions and often overburdened. Families are again increasingly bringing their children to care, despite Corona.
School children and adolescents currently lack social contact, learning together, laughing, arguing, communicating, social and emotional togetherness outside of families, all of which is reduced.
Students hardly know universities from the inside, self-study and distance learning are the only options in their educational path, only a few practical exercises are currently possible. All our youth of the next generation would need learning with the highest quality, because education is the foundation of society. This is currently not possible. (Parents are to be thanked at this point for their current educational commitment. However, they are primarily parents, and teachers are the educational professionals).
Soul Damage
Masks, vaccines, and viral mutations fill the daily news; they continue to work in the subconscious of all of us. Children’s voices on the phone sound quiet, thinned out, monotonous, emotionless. The opposite of other faces, facial expressions, gestures, body language are missing in comparison to a normal everyday life.
These are reduced, the expressiveness of the body impoverished, the soul suffers. The way to learning in school should therefore be made possible as quickly as possible.
How do we deal with the present and the future?
Very well, we all do not want to give up. Also PILGRIM schools will continue to take responsibility for the MITWELT, to shape it, to deal creatively with possibilities of learning. This gives motivation for the future, in which schools can again do everything that makes everyday learning exciting: learning together, projects, competitions, school festivals.
The media is full of the worldwide emergency caused by Corona. The time of health crisis + economic crisis + future crisis (fear -> soul crisis) + environmental crisis challenges creative solutions and leads both companies and public institutions to change and find new ways.
So it means for all of us to make an effort for the preservation of the coexistence of people, for a life with quality. The necessary change in society has obviously needed a crisis to initiate a rethinking and a new action in the areas of society, environment and economy.
On the way we wish all teachers and schools all the best!
Maga Dr.in Herta Ucsnik – Director
HR MMag. Dr. Alexander Kucera – Deputy Director
HR Mag. Dr. Johann Hisch – Honorary President