Corbett Tutor Serena

This made me laugh after going through reproduction with my Biology GCSE students 😁

Those poor unfortunate eggs that get released every month always think it’s their time to be part of my world… buuuuuuuut sorry, I’m just not ready for you yet 🤷🏼‍♀️ neither is period 🩸 Thank you so much for all being such wonderful humans, absolutely adore ya all! Just wanted to say thank you for all the support on my book Me Vs Brain and for also just always being the kindest people ❤️🧠❤️🧠❤️

Inspired by some of our local businesses doing the same... I am offering 5 hours of free tuition to a local Lockdown Hero! Please comment nominating someone who's done an amazing job of serving the local community and deserves a bit of help in return 😃

PLEASE DO NOT put any details of other people's children in your comment, for obvious reasons! You can send me a message - with the parent's permission - if you know details of how somebody would benefit from tuition; otherwise I'll check with people myself. I'm imagining this being of most benefit to Year 10 or 11 students needing to make up for lost time in maths & science GCSE courses or get a head start on A levels - but I teach a pretty wide range of ages so I'm open to suggestions!

It's been really wonderful hearing that my last post brought some comfort to Year 11 and 13 students affected by this summer's exam cancellations; I hope this one is helpful too! Yesterday I wrote about acknowledging and accepting your *feelings* on this; today I’m going to talk about your *actions*.

Most of us feel afraid and powerless in the face of this awful pandemic; but taking positive action makes a huge difference to our management of these emotions - and if they’re the right actions, they’ll make a significant practical difference to your life too. There are three main areas I want to encourage you in, but this turned into a mammoth post 😳 so today I’m just going to focus on the first step:

KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON

First: with your routine. Psychologists and those who have experienced similar circumstances before (being under house arrest, in a war zone, or in a country that implemented lockdown some time ago) are in widespread agreement on this. ROUTINE IS ESSENTIAL. I’m saying this to you as one of the most haphazardly impromptu people on the planet: you will go gradually bananas 🍌🍌 if you have no routine. Get up in the morning, get washed and dressed, have breakfast, and be getting down to something productive by 9am. 😱 Okay, okay, I know you’d rather chew your own toes off than be up at that appalling hour of the morning so I’ll give you some leeway: 10am at the *latest*. How much of the day you spend in productive activity is almost less important than starting early in the morning. Aim to be in bed by 10pm and asleep by 11. Get outdoors every single day for at least 20 minutes (the exception to this being if you or someone in your household is in one of the highly vulnerable categories and you have no private outside space). Eat well. Exercise. I’m not saying this because I’m a boring traditionalist old fogey who can’t remember how it feels to be sixteen; I’m saying it because the scientific consensus is absolutely clear that all of these things are essential to your mental health. I know, I sound like your mum. Guess what: your mum is right.

Second: with your education. There are two very good reasons for this. Reason number one: you just don’t know right now exactly how your grades are going to be determined this summer, but what I can tell you is your teachers want you to do well! Give them every reason you possibly can to award you credit for the work you do over the next 8 weeks. Yes, you have the option of sitting exams in the autumn if you’re not given grades you’re happy with, but DO NOT KID YOURSELF THAT THIS IS THE EASY OPTION. If you think it’s hard to focus on your work now, when there is almost nothing else you can be doing instead, don’t for a moment imagine it will be easier in the summer, when everyone else is kicking back and relaxing and celebrating their grades (and – who knows? – maybe even the return of some of our freedoms).

But the second reason is actually far more important. Remember what I said yesterday? EDUCATION IS NEVER A WASTE. And the skills you gain by practising and developing your prioritisation, discipline and concentration will be worth far far more to you than any of your current qualifications. You guys have got a bum deal. But you can turn it into a positive: if you carry on with a well-structured revision plan for the next 8 weeks, just as if your exams were really happening, without the incentive of knowing that you’ll have to sit in an exam hall – your life skills will be streets ahead of those who didn’t have to face these challenges. Indulge me for a moment in mangling a far more talented writer’s words:

If you can plan – and not make revision plans your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with this dreadful disaster,
And carry on with your revision just the same;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’-worth of study done,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you will overcome!

This is going to be easier for some of you than others. Some of you have worked hard all year, handed in every homework, revised every topic already and were planning to spend your time between now and June going over practice exam questions and past papers. You know what I said above about those essential life skills? You guys have got that NAILED. You may be disappointed at not getting to prove yourself this year in an exam hall, but let me tell you right now you will go far in life whether you were headed for straight 9s or a mix of 5s and 6s. By all means spend a few weeks on those practice papers and let your teachers know you’re still working and improving.

Some of you, let’s be honest, haven’t been great about getting all your work done along the way, but you’re pretty confident you understand everything, even if you can’t recall key words and formulae, and you were hoping to pull something out of the hat with a burst of last-minute revision. Now you’re at the mercy of teachers who’ve probably been tearing their hair out for the last few years trying to get you to take your work seriously… Well, I’ll be honest with you, the end of the spring term was definitely pushing it anyway in terms of having time to cover the last two years’ worth of material AND practice exam technique (which is not the same thing, at all, as simply being able to recall information). So knuckle down NOW. Really prove to your teachers that you are taking your studies seriously. Let them know everything you’re doing, and hope that they will be able to see the improvements you make over the next six weeks.

Some of you find certain (maybe all) of your subjects just a world of painful confusion, and have no idea where you’d even start with revision when you’ve been sitting in a classroom for two years wondering what on earth your teacher was on about. The good news for you guys is there are a lot of teachers and tutors around right now with a lower workload than they were expecting at this time of year (just be aware that this doesn’t apply to all! A lot of teachers are working INCREDIBLY hard offering distance support to their pupils; and many tutors – me included – are just as busy as, if not busier than, they would normally be). Reach out. If you - by which I mean your parents - can afford any extra help, you may find group tutoring being offered online at a far more affordable price than you would normally be able to get (see below for more on that).

I hugely recommend the CGP range of books, widely available on Amazon: they have Student Books (comprehensive textbooks with practice questions, for if you can’t make head or tail of a subject), Revision Guides (a summary of all the information you need to recall for the exam, for if you understand the material but haven’t learned it yet) and Exam Practice Workbooks (for understanding how to turn all that knowledge into marks in the exam). If you need help from a tutor, Holland Park Education have put together a programme of group lessons at very affordable prices - and just £5 for a taster to try it out -https://bookwhen.com/hollandparkeducation =ev-s4ev-20200330150000 Let me just clarify that although I’m delivering some of these sessions, I don’t gain any benefit at all from more people joining them; I’m sharing them here because the guys at Holland Park did a fantastic job of putting this programme together in a really short time, they did it knowing they’re unlikely to make any profit out of this, and I think that kind of thing deserves to be shared. (And no, I’m not being paid commission by CGP either; I just really like using their books.) Educational resources website www.twinkl.co.uk has responded to the current crisis by offering access to the website for free for the next month (use code CVDTWINKLHELPS for the free access) and there are free revision notes and exam practice questions available on https://www.physicsandmathstutor.com/

If there are any particular questions you want to ask, feel free to post on my page and I will do my best to help you (with the proviso that I’m still working, I’m trying to help people in my own local community who are affected by the virus and I also need to carve out some time for my family!)

Once you have your current stage of education sorted out, it’s time to:

LOOK TO THE FUTURE

More on that later 😊

TO ALL YEAR 11 AND YEAR 13 STUDENTS

I first want to say I am heartbroken on your behalf, as I know are your school teachers. The shutdown of the entire UK’s education system affects you more than any other age groups and the news for most of you was devastating. I’ve spent ten days now trying to formulate all my thoughts and emotions around this and it turns out they aren’t much more coherent now than they were last Wednesday evening, but here goes.

Many of you will feel that the entire last two years of your life have been preparing you for an event that’s now been cancelled, and all that time and effort has been wasted. Let me tell you something.

EDUCATION IS NEVER A WASTE.

Never! It’s easy to forget this in our modern education system, but the point of all that learning you do is not supposed to be exams! It’s supposed to be the LEARNING.

You assimilate an extraordinary amount of knowledge in the lead-up to your GCSEs and A Levels. I’ve heard it said that when you sit your GCSEs you have more knowledge on a wider range of subjects than at any other time of your life; I don’t know if that’s true but I certainly wish I could still analyse an English text and produce a decent essay (up for lessons on that if any of you want to teach me 🤪).

But the knowledge itself isn’t even really the point either. It’s the stretching and developing of your brain and the practising of really essential life skills.

First: your brain is like any other part of your body: it needs to be exercised regularly to keep it in good shape and to build up its strength; and while it’s growing, it needs to be stretched to develop to its full potential. Imagine a baby that never tried to crawl or stand: its leg muscles and bones would not develop as they should and its growth would be permanently affected. Your brain is just like that, and at your stage of life it’s going through extraordinary growth and changes.

Second: I often tell my students that the life skills they learn while studying for their exams are worth far more than the qualifications themselves. I’ve hired people, and I’ve never been interested in whether they got a 6 or a 9 in GCSE Geography, but I am always extremely interested in whether they can practice diligence, hard work and self discipline. Now, some of you maybe had not quite got there yet with knuckling down and taking your studies seriously but if you were one of those planning a mad intensive revision rush from the beginning of the Easter holidays onwards, there is still plenty you can do on that front (more on that later).

Most of you will feel devastated, and you may think that is selfish and petty given the greater griefs facing many people right now. I want to tell you something too.

IT IS OKAY TO MOURN WHAT YOU’VE LOST.

Yes, there are thousands – hundreds of thousands - who have lost their lives, lost loved ones, or lost their livelihoods as a result of this virus. By the time this is all over there will be millions. You may be facing some of these sorrows too and if that’s you, I am truly sorry for your loss.

Nevertheless: what this country’s entire Year 11 and Year 13 have lost is real so give yourselves permission to grieve it. Just about every human society in the world has created rites of passage for its teenagers, in which they can be tested and prove themselves worthy members of adult society; public exams are in many ways our modern post-industrial-world equivalent of that. The fact that we, as a species, so uniformly come up with these rites of passage tells me that they serve a real and profound psychological need, and you are right to feel deprived of them – even those of you who weren’t expecting to do particularly well. You haven’t just lost your public exams either, but all the post-exam events and celebrations of your hard work. Some of you who were in isolation before schools closed have even lost the chance to say goodbye to the people you’ve spent most of the last few years with.

You can grieve your proms and your post-exam parties and your farewells too. No, of course they aren’t as important as the lives lost. But they are important and they are real and they meant a great deal to you. I have just one small plea: many of us, while grieving, are not always quite our best selves so yes, give yourselves time and permission to mourn but do try to remain kind to your families while you do so 😏.

So take some time to remind yourself that the last two years of your life have not been wasted; and to acknowledge your grief. But not too much time. You’ve been home for a week now so it’s about time to start asking yourself: what next? This post has already got long enough though so I’m going to write separately about that in a bit.

Board game fun to learn digestion :-)