By Jordana Beville
During this challenging time, we are all experiencing various degrees of anger, sadness and boredom. Usually a way of coping with and navigating our way through these feelings involves trying to find creative outlets.
Dealing with the pandemic through creativity allows us to reflect on the situation and our emotions that have surfaced from it. These can include methods such as painting, drawing, writing or even cooking. Each individual has their own way of connecting with their feelings that works for them.
For many students in Victoria, remote learning and lockdown 2.0 involves a lot of time spent in front of their computer. Too much technology can result in overstimulation and affect our mental health. This is why it is important for students to find time away from their screens to practice creativity.
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Allowing for a creative outlet during remote learning will help them better understand their thoughts and emotions and gives them a chance to reflect. Whether this be during their creative subjects during school hours such as Art or Literature, or on their own accord during their downtime.
At Oakleigh Grammar, the Year 10 Language and Literature students have been exploring reflection through Poetry.
Poetry provides us a way of putting our thoughts onto a page, based on our observations, thoughts or feelings. Oakleigh Grammar students used poetry to express how they feel as a collective. Together, students worked on writing a class poem sharing a real reflection of their feelings individually, as a whole class and as a society.
Isolation – Must We!
It spreads like paper flying in the wind,
The laughter stops, the sickness kicks in.
The abstinence of my elation,
The laughter stops, the sickness kicks in.
All of us confined, all of us alone,
Isolation is the bane of this new world for us to be alone.
Society cut down in a wave of deprecation,
Just stay away call it a day.
The laughter has stopped and the sickness kicked in,
Life, death the new norm.
This virus swells like a storm.
No words to describe the pain we are all in,
Whereabouts does this pain begin?
Wear a mask, get on with the task,
Please just do as we ask.
Stop the flow, stop the spread,
I do not wish to lie in bed, or end up dead.
Just stay away, call it a day,
Let us pray to keep the virus at bay.
Because, when the laughter stops the sickness kicks in.
