In a year of unexpected changes, Seren House shines

Dr Eirwen Oswald, principal of Seren House Cottage School writes:

At Seren House Cottage School, the start of this year was exciting.
We welcomed our first Grade 10s, opened our second campus and delighted in the many new faces, both learners and teachers. From those early heady days of first term and promises of a busy and exciting year, little were we expecting the year to come.

During the first term, Seren House saw two public speaking teams compete in the SA Guild of Speech and Drama competition, both receiving good results for first-time teams. The term was busy with visitors from Hooked on Books, Science Scuffle, Friends of Albert’s Farm and a visit to Constitution Hill. The term ended abruptly, when learners and teachers headed home to face the new and sometimes scary Covid-19 reality.

Lockdown felt like forever and although we saw each other on Zoom every day, we missed our school, the insightful, often surprising interactions with our learners, the sharing of information and learning and the everyday care that makes Seren House so special.

When we returned to school in June, everything was different, but despite the strict social distance and mask protocols now in place, the learners and teachers rallied together and soon Seren House started to resemble the beautiful school it has become since opening in 2019. We wrote the first exams in July and the learners exceeded expectations in their results.

As we come to the end of a strange and often difficult year, we look back and have seen enormous growth in every one of our learners, despite the challenges and of that we are very proud.

We look forward to a calmer but fuller 2021 as our little school grows and brings new and exciting ways of reinventing education.