Farewell to a mucked-up year

My heart breaks for this year’s Covid-affected Year 12 cohort. All the abandoned rites of passage.

High jinks: Muckup Day is a cherished tradition

So what did you do? Throw eggs at lesser mortals, perhaps. Squirt them with water pistols; cover them in shaving foam. Put glitter on the ceiling fans. Or maybe flour. Walk a cow onto the second level knowing full well they can go up stairs but not down. Run riot with the silly string. Rig the PA. Fill the principal’s office with balloons. Gladwrap the doorways. Bubble up the fountains. Thread a rope of pantyhose tied end to end throughout the school corridors. Stonehenge the oval with a circle of lockers. Write a memorable message in fertiliser on the grass, leaving a delayed surprise to slowly come up. List the school for sale with an added Sold sign on the front gate. Let loose three pigs in the corridors, marked 1, 2 and 4. Cower?

Ah, the joys and terrors of that annual leaving ritual of Australian schools, when the Year 12s run riot on their longed-for calendar date that’s the pivot between childhood freedoms and adult responsibilities. But this year, for so many locked-down high schools, corridors were empty and classrooms silent on Muckup Day – much to the relief of principals, who are usually bracing for the worst.

Yet what of all those other missed rituals that mark the end of secondary education? My heart breaks for this year’s Covid-affected Year 12 cohort. All the abandoned rites of passage. Getting their uniforms signed in marker pen. Tribal dawn gatherings. Barbecue brekkies. Leaving assemblies, in person, because it’s their turn now to finally take the stage. Parent dinners. Formals. Possibly even Schoolies Week. All those forever-photos crammed with joy. The class of 2021 has had two hugely disrupted years, in many areas of Australia, and they’re magnificent for enduring them; they’re a dignified, resilient, accepting generation like no other.

Last term has been gruelling for school staff, too. Educator Ned Manning recently tweeted: “To all those teachers and workers in schools around the country, it’s been a helluva term. In nearly 50 years (I know) in the classroom nothing could have prepared us for this. Teaching remotely. Marking remotely. Farewelling Yr 12 remotely. Hats off to all of you. Champions.” A parent tweeted in agreement, explaining how their son’s high school staff had been teaching all day during Term 3 – yet no one was turning on their cameras in response, and how enervating that must be. And now teachers in lockdown areas have to face Term 4; have to deal with so many questions. How to bring students back to face-to-face teaching amid huge uncertainty, fear, belligerence and bolshiness among certain parents. Because already there are sharp differences of opinion over this most emotional cargo – our nation’s young.

Some parents are determined to get their kids back into classrooms no matter what; others are desperate to keep them home. It’s a deeply personal choice, like no other we’ve faced. My teenagers are vaxxed yet some of their friends aren’t. Some are scared of needles, some are scared full stop, some are being talked out of it by their parents. Some want to do it despite their parents – and who wins in that scenario? It’s a minefield. It divides.

Then there are issues of ventilation, of public transport on the school commute, of unvaccinated staff. Will everything be shut down again at the drop of a hat? Some schools will offer in-class as well as Zoom scenarios, giving parents choice; others will insist on in-class only. I don’t envy the educators wading back into this. If you live in a state or territory where your teachers and your school leavers haven’t faced any of this, and it looks like you have a normal Term 4 ahead of you – count yourself lucky. I envy you. As for the locked-down teachers traditionally winding down in the final term after their very big year, well, right now they’re facing unprecedented challenges, which could make their singular Term 3 seem like a doddle. Champions indeed.