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Face-to-face learning: a welcome (and well-planned) return

Sydney Community College Blog | by Claire Pickard on 4 October 2021

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Ah, the October long weekend: it’s our three-quarter mark that brings long warmer evenings and kicks off that end-of-year countdown. After a winter working remotely to keep learning online, College staff are now rolling up sleeves to prepare for a November to remember. That's where we aim to make good on many promised courses that the Delta variant postponed and postponed again.

The lengthy Sydney Lockdown 2.0 saw us deliver over 160 online courses, to 1200 students learning from their loungerooms. Many of these are now permanent fixtures in our online schedule, but many more were our way of adapting to overcome the stay-at-home orders - with things such as Floral Drawing and Bookbinding, to help people stay creatively occupied and engaged with learning.

Although the wider community will see activities re-starting in the next week or so (for the fully vaccinated), Sydney Community College is planning a return with face-to-face classes in November. We’re making sure all classrooms are ready and procedures are in place to keep us safe.

As we put 2021 back onto the tracks, they say we need to prepare for a “new normal”. And that’s a chance to consider new options, to hit the refresh button to create a “new you”. What new interests could you add for yourself? It would be great to look back and think, “COVID was a great disruption to my life, but I never would have imagined I’d take up Mastering Small Talk”, or one of the many other things that are best learned in the company of others.

So, whether you’ve been working from home, not working, or never worked harder in your life, we hope you agree it will be great to set out the tables, space the chairs to 1.5 metres, and welcome folks back to the classroom – safely.

Sydney Community College Blog

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