Wednesday 2nd December: Reflection: Rachel Green

 

We learnt about Paradoxes this week in our Year 5 RE lesson. Paradoxes, coming after a discussion about the incarnation is quite a tall order for 9-year olds! Anyway, we looked at paradoxes; a statement or proposition which, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems logically unacceptable or self-contradictory. In other words, the paradox of the King of kings, God’s beloved son, our Saviour Jesus Christ coming to Earth as a poor, vulnerable new-born baby. This paradox, which is so opposed to any common sense, never ceases to put a smile on my face. A smile that I have had now for a very long time!

The Green family had to self-isolate during November. Poor Matthew picked up COVID at school. He only thought he had a headache but locked himself into his bedroom with a packet of paracetamol and a home test kit, whilst life went on as normal for the rest of us. Until day 4 that is, when he got a positive result texted through to him and the whole family had to self-isolate. At that point we all tried to avoid each other, zoomed from different rooms in the house and cleaned continuously for the next 6 days. On day 10 Matthew came out of his bedroom again, thankfully none the worse for ware, whilst the rest of us needed to complete our 14-day sentence before we went back to work. I was overjoyed to finally be going back to school and it was good to be welcomed back by colleagues. Children however often do not know how to respond to teachers and they certainly did not know how to respond to my reappearance. Children see us adults as alien creatures, not realising that we too are human, can make mistakes or can even catch viruses. I got a few, awkward sideways glances in the playground. One or two braver souls said, “It’s Mrs Green!” The paradox was that it was Jimmy, yes Jimmy “the naughty boy”, Jimmy the child who has to be told twice, Jimmy, who if anyone was going to break it, it was going to be Jimmy, yes it was no other than Jimmy who momentarily left his game of tag, came up to me and said, ”It’s nice to have you back Miss!”

And the paradox made me smile for the rest of the day.