Hunter Wall, Grade 11
UWC Thailand
Attending a school with people from all over the world is, and always will be, the pinnacle of education. We get to break cultural boundaries, hear about new perspectives on life, and create friends from every corner of the globe. However, coming together at a central point does happen to make things easier—way, way easier.
After almost all UWCs were forced to send their students home due to the ongoing pandemic; learning became tricky and reaching a consensus for how this would work was almost impossible. Here at UWC Thailand, a lot of students made the hard decision to remain here since the situation back home put them more at risk whilst others made the equally tough decision to return home so they wouldn’t be stuck in Thailand during the summer, unable to see their families. This sudden change in the environment has taken a toll on all of us, and things have started rough. Students living in Europe are having to start their school days at 2:30 in the morning as well as our friends back in The Americas, who are logging on at 20:00 for their first lesson.
For the first couple of weeks, we saw a decrease in motivation as well as an increase in stress, and it looked as if things were only going to get worse. Until it didn’t. Teachers here at UWC Thailand started trying new things with distant learning; students here and back home saw a rise in engagement, and it began to feel like school again. We took a shift, as an entire education system, from being grade driven to being driven by one another. It was all about getting online as much as possible to ask questions, understand the content, and attempting to decrease the plethora of factors that seemed to start holding us back. We overcame the challenges presented to us, adapted to a new environment, and ran with it. Sounds familiar, right? It’s something we all, as a movement, have had to do time and time again. It’s what makes UWC such a great community. This is the mission. It’s taking what we have and learning to do what benefits others.
Across the globe, all UWC students are facing the same dilemma, and they’re all proving that this is yet another trial to triumph. It’s exciting to see how teens, teachers, and administrators are living up to the idea in which they chose to be a part of, and doing it so well. There will be days when things seem difficult, and there might already have been, but the important thing to know is that no matter what we go through, we go through it together.
“We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”
~ Martin Luther King Jr.
After almost all UWCs were forced to send their students home due to the ongoing pandemic; learning became tricky and reaching a consensus for how this would work was almost impossible. Here at UWC Thailand, a lot of students made the hard decision to remain here since the situation back home put them more at risk whilst others made the equally tough decision to return home so they wouldn’t be stuck in Thailand during the summer, unable to see their families. This sudden change in the environment has taken a toll on all of us, and things have started rough. Students living in Europe are having to start their school days at 2:30 in the morning as well as our friends back in The Americas, who are logging on at 20:00 for their first lesson.
For the first couple of weeks, we saw a decrease in motivation as well as an increase in stress, and it looked as if things were only going to get worse. Until it didn’t. Teachers here at UWC Thailand started trying new things with distant learning; students here and back home saw a rise in engagement, and it began to feel like school again. We took a shift, as an entire education system, from being grade driven to being driven by one another. It was all about getting online as much as possible to ask questions, understand the content, and attempting to decrease the plethora of factors that seemed to start holding us back. We overcame the challenges presented to us, adapted to a new environment, and ran with it. Sounds familiar, right? It’s something we all, as a movement, have had to do time and time again. It’s what makes UWC such a great community. This is the mission. It’s taking what we have and learning to do what benefits others.
Across the globe, all UWC students are facing the same dilemma, and they’re all proving that this is yet another trial to triumph. It’s exciting to see how teens, teachers, and administrators are living up to the idea in which they chose to be a part of, and doing it so well. There will be days when things seem difficult, and there might already have been, but the important thing to know is that no matter what we go through, we go through it together.
“We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”
~ Martin Luther King Jr.
www.unitedworldwide.co