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The Dads In Charge Of Lockdown Lessons

Walsall Community — Rob, Isabel & Toby Pearson Get To Grips With A Construction Project

Philosopher George Santayana once remarked that ‘a child only educated in school is an uneducated child.’

With lockdown removing most children from the classrooms, home schooling has been the ‘new normal’ for many.

“Opportunities to learn surround us in everything we do – it doesn’t just happen in school,” explained Head Teacher Helen Wright.

“Give a child your time and attention and they will learn and remember more than they will ever in the classroom.”

Parents across the country have risen to the challenge and we catch up with a couple of local dads in charge of lockdown lessons.

Rob Pearson swapped his day-to-day job as a building maintenance systems engineer for teacher when schools closed down due to the coronavirus pandemic.
His daughter Isabel, who attends Park Hall Infants Academy, enjoyed daily lessons from dad, while his school teacher wife Cassie continued her day job.

As well as the 3 Rs, Rob and Isabel enjoyed regular nature lessons – signing up for a five-week bird-watching survey with the British Ornithological Trust (BTO) and planting flowers and tracking them as they grew.

There was also plenty of play-style learning to help keep Isabel’s three-year-old brother Toby occupied, too.

The pièce de resistance for Rob was the science lessons – making different paper aeroplanes and measuring how far they fly, and building a wind turbine out of tin cans.

“I’ve been wanting to make one for a couple of years and as we had the chance to do it, we made it one of our projects,” said Rob, who was placed on furlough in April.

“Isabel helped where she could, with the gluing, looking at the instructions, and holding the pole in place, but I did the cutting and twisting the blades because the edges were sharp. It’s still in the garden now and looks great. I’ve enjoyed doing it for the past few weeks.”

It was DIY and science that Stuart Webb’s children enjoyed when he supervised their lockdown lessons.

The Aldridge dad of two, who works as a service manager for Walsall Council’s leisure services department, worked throughout the lockdown period, but was able to do the lessons when he took annual leave.

Martha, aged eight and in year four at Cooper & Jordan School, and her brother Henry, who is 11 and in year six at the school, have spent most of their time being supervised by their mother Kelly, who works at Bloxwich Leisure Centre as swimming instructor and receptionist.

But Stuart, who admitted he felt guilty about not being able to dedicate the same time to doing lessons with his children because of working, he ensured he did his bit on his days off.

His favourite project? A challenge from the school to create something from marbles – with his children, they collected old timber from the garage and other bits and bobs to make a pinball machine, which worked brilliantly, he said.

“We came up with the idea and they both did the sawing, drilling and hammering to make it – the kids absolutely loved it,” he said.
In fact, Martha enjoyed woodwork so much she enlisted Stuart to help her make a birdhouse from offcuts of wood.

Stuart also enjoyed a wind power science experiment that the children were asked to do at home, with cardboard, string and a hairdryer.

“We’ve also been on plenty of walks and bike rides, while Henry has been able to practise some cricket as the nets opened at Aldridge Cricket Club,” he added.

July Editions Now Available

Our July editions of The Pioneer Magazines and Great Barr Gazette are hot off the press and will be dropping through your letterboxes in the next few days. But, if you don’t receive a copy of our printed magazines or you just can’t wait to see what’s inside, follow the link to your favourite edition and read it online!

The Pioneer Magazine Walsall Edition , The Pioneer Magazine Villages Edition covering Aldridge, Clayhanger, Pelsall, Stonnall, Streetly, Walsall Wood and Great Barr Gazette

These issues are positively brimming with local stories about local people including students at Ormiston Shelfield Community Academy, dads doing home schooling and the amazing work of our NHS Workers, Key Workers and volunteers who have made such a difference during the pandemic.

As always, we are extremely grateful to our Advertisers who even through this terribly difficult time have continued to advertise with us, ensuring that we were able to put our magazines together which we know are eagerly awaited by our readers.

Stay safe.

Linking Lives Aldridge: Long-lasting Friendships

Linking Lives Aldridge is a new project set up in October 2019 by Aldridge Methodist Church. When the Minister, Bev, arrived in Aldridge at the end of 2011, she very quickly realised that there is a real issue around loneliness and social isolation in the Aldridge community.

“The life expectancy in Aldridge is ten years higher than in other parts of the borough,” says Bev. “A quarter of the population is aged over 65, and almost two thirds of those are living alone. Many older people don’t have family living close by, many have acted as carers for their partners and have become isolated through their caring role, which has resulted in them losing confidence and the ability and opportunity to interact with others.”

Experts agree that social isolation is the biggest challenge facing our ageing society and many older people fear loneliness more than lack of money or deteriorating health.

Research has shown that loneliness and isolation are harmful to our health. The ‘Campaign to End Loneliness’ states that almost a fifth of older people only have contact from their families, friends and neighbours once a week, and for a tenth of older people it is less than once a month. Age UK research showed that for two fifths of older people, the television is their main company. Loneliness has been shown to be as harmful to your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and how lonely you are this year will determine how depressed you are next year.

Social isolation and loneliness began to be recognised as an issue across the whole of the borough and towards the end of 2015 Walsall Public Health appointed Angela Aitken as Senior Programme Development and Commissioning Manager with a remit that included older people. Bev met with Angela in October 2015 to share her knowledge about Aldridge. The Health & Wellbeing Strategy of Walsall Council for 2017-20 resulted in the setting up of Making Connection Walsall (MCW). MCW provides older people in Walsall with support to build their social networks and engage in community activities. MCW also provides the health community and social care professionals with a single route of referral into appropriate local community based social support networks.

Aldridge Magazine — Elaine – Linking Lives Aldridge

Bev has been in regular contact with Carol and Mags at the MCW East hub, based at Manor Farm, since it was set up and soon became aware that the referrals coming in showed that there was a great need for a befriending service in Aldridge. Aldridge Methodist Church applied for funding and once that was secured the role of the Project Coordinator was advertised, interviews undertaken, and Elaine was appointed to the role.

Linking Lives Aldridge is a member of the Linking Lives UK network of befriending schemes who work primarily with churches and Christian agencies to provide the support, advice and resources required to set up a project in local communities. Jeremy Sharpe, the National Director, who delivered training to Elaine & the Management Committee, and then to the first volunteers, says: “We are so delighted that Linking Lives Aldridge is now up and running and reaching out to those isolated older people in Aldridge.”

What Linking Lives Aldridge does is exactly what it says on the tin – it links someone who would like to be befriended to a volunteer who would like to befriend. Elaine explains how it works.

“When we receive a referral, I make contact to help to understand the Link Friend’s needs. Our volunteers, who are vetted and trained, are then matched with a Link Friend, considering personality, experience, interests, availability and geography. At an introductory visit, I introduce the volunteer to an assigned Link Friend in the Link Friend’s home. Assuming this meeting goes well, the Link Friend and volunteer will then agree regular ongoing visits. Visits usually happen once a week/fortnight for around an hour or so and it takes the form of informal conversations over a cup of tea/coffee and the aim is for the volunteer to provide crucial support to their Link Friend.”

This has been quite a change in role for Elaine, who was previously a teaching assistant.

“I love stepping into other people’s worlds and finding ways the project can help,” explains Elaine. “I love the job because it’s helping people, but on a personal level it feels really good to know I am doing something that makes a difference to people. Linking Lives is not a team, it’s a family and the partnerships are not clinical; they’re a network of friendships that you know will last a lifetime. That hour a week that the volunteers give makes such a difference to someone who is lonely. I sometimes feel like a teacher standing on a playground watching friendships blossom.”

She goes on to say that parts of the job are ‘gut-wrenching and hard, because when you do step into someone’s world and see the pain and agony they face, it breaks your heart.’

Linking Lives Aldridge has responded to the Covid-19 crisis by changing from face to face befriending to telephone befriending.

“We put an appeal on facebook for volunteers,” says Bev. “Aldridge responded brilliantly, with over 60 people volunteering for telephone befriending and to pick up prescriptions and shopping for people. We are working closely with MCW and receiving referrals from them.”

When asked for feedback about his Link Friend calls, one of the new volunteers described it as ‘a gift from Covid-19’ and one of the new Link Friends said ‘the phone-calls are the highlight of my week and I feel much brighter afterwards.’

“We couldn’t run the project without our wonderful volunteers,” says Bev.

Her hope is that people the relationships developed between Link Friends and befrienders during this awful covid-19 crisis will be relationships that will be long lasting.

If you would like to know more please get in touch with Elaine or Bev on 07307 865973, or by email on Aldridge@linkinglives.uk. Follow us on facebook @linkinglivesaldridge

2020 Vision Of The Past

By Dick Scarlett, regular contributor to The Pioneer Magazine

Whilst throwing together ideas for my latest music video I thought it might be nice to have a few background images of some local landmarks from in and around Walsall & Birmingham. So I jumped on to the internet right away there were a few easy wins – some lovely photos of the War Memorial at the top of Barr Beacon, a few black & white shots of Walsall back in the day, including some highly nostalgic shots of the old ABC cinema and one in particular of the foyer there that brought back memories I thought had long since been consigned to the neural scrapheap. That feeling of trudging back out through the foyer, past the long closed snack bar, talking ten to the dozen with your mates about the film you had just seen and then all of you blinking and staggering almost drunkenly for a few moments as you step outside and your brain fights manically to adjust to the full on daylight after you’ve been sitting in near total darkness for two hours. Ah yes, electric shock therapy to your circadian rhythms – funny what you remember.

And that single shot of the foyer unlocking a whole flood of recollections did get me to thinking – what other memories of my early years in Walsall had I, if not completely forgotten about, certainly not recalled in years? In no particular order the following slowly percolated to the surface of my admittedly jam-packed little mind. I remember daring to venture into the deepest darkest corners of Grice’s bookshop to pull out huge books on astronomy or science. Admiring with envious delight the latest advances in pen and propelling pencil design at Millington York, doubly silly as not only couldn’t I afford them, but I have always been truly atrocious at art!

I have fond memories of the pick & mix in Woolworths and the small but always interesting toy section upstairs. The old Co-Op superstore in Bridge St. was seemingly endless – it seemed to have a dozen floors and all of them went on forever. Side note; was the layout of the Co-Op based on human anatomy? I seem to remember the shoes were in the basement and the hats were on the top floor? And there was flipping through the posters in Gadsby’s until we were thrown out and trying on school uniforms in Buxton & Bonnett. And then trudging all the way back up the market hill, going underneath an old building that was held up by huge diagonal timber joists that were sunken into the pavement, to retrieve the car from a weird split level car park that was the definition of a wasteland; modern four wheel SUV’s would struggle with it but my Dad’s old Cortina shooting brake made light work of it! And sitting in the backseat of the same car as it made its way up that stupidly steep road that used to be there going over the top of the town. They weren’t perfect but they were happy days.

Now of course every moment of everyone’s lives is recorded, photographed & posted online. We won’t need memories as we’ll have the Facebook Archives – they can be housed in disused libraries. And even the cinemas now have a fifty-yard walk-in gradually increasing light from the screen to the foyer. How times change!

The video for Still, containing the background images mentioned, can be found on YouTube!