The Owl 2020

The Owl 2020 Lockdown 2020
disrupted. Students who had their grades
coming up could make steady progress and
to work towards their goal of achieving
these musical grades. Lessons continued
once the lockdown restrictions began to be
lifted in May and, for some, into the summer
months.
Rowan Moore
PASTORAL MESSAGES
Over lockdown it was clear that the pupils
of BRA missed the teaching staff and that
this feeling was reciprocated. Although
involved in online lessons, with some years
doing Zoom lessons, it was not the same as
being in a classroom. Many things cannot be
translated through a screen and, although it
was highly beneficial to have these lessons,
many things were missed. There is only so
much personality that you can pick up
through a screen. A lesson on your own, in
front of a computer screen, will never
amount to face to face interaction in a class
room with a teacher and class that you have
grasped the dynamic of and were missing
during lockdown.
While all this digital learning was beneficial
to our academic career and highly
appreciated, there was something about
school life that still felt like it was missing.
When Mr Jamison posted the “2020 BRA
Staff Not the Christmas Revue” it provided
great laughter and a sense of unity amongst
staff and teachers. Teachers got involved in
a range of activities from ‘Pointless’,
involving Mr Hughes, Mrs Craig and Ms
Corish to the iconic Superman cameo that is
a staple in the staff revue involving Mr
Irwin, Mr Harte and Mr Morrison, to name
a few. At the end of the video, all of the
teaching staff were shown with a message
saying, “We Miss You” - a feeling that was
unanimous amongst both the teachers and
the pupils of BRA.
Rowan Moore
LOCKDOWN QUIZZES
2020 has seen many unprecedented things
come to pass but I can emphatically say
that when this year began I could not have
envisaged myself miming power ballads
on the school Facebook page to hundreds
of BRA pupils, parents and alumni. These
have indeed been strange times.
At the beginning of lockdown, when we
were all yanked out of the familiar
togetherness of daily school life, I had
decided to run a small quiz for staff on
Zoom to help recreate a sense of fraternity.
With our current proficiency it is easy to
forget the early days of this technology
when Zoom was uncharted territory and so
the event migrated to the more amenable
environment of Facebook and in the
process became public. Everyone in any
way connected to the school (and beyond)
was invited to take part and thus the BRA
Lockdown Quiz was born. After that initial
quiz, it became a Friday night routine over
the following three months and Mr Cleland
did a sterling job promoting it (and by
affixing the adjective ‘great’ gave it a sense
of grandeur which it unfortunately never
lived up to).
Thinking that everyone would enjoy me
humiliating myself and with the hope that it
is (allegedly) a good thing to take one
outside one’s comfort zone, I decided that
the music rounds would challenge the limits
of my shame. Thus for the third round the
challenge was to identify whatever songs I
butchered on the piano, gargled in an
unseemly manner, mimed (with often
unseemly dancing) or bashed put on the
bells. Your forbearance with this trying
round was appreciated and I can assure you
that nobody felt more relief than I when
moving on to round 4 each week.
In my attempts to avoid general knowledge
rounds, we shared linked rounds, list
rounds, quotes/catchphrase attribution,
questions related to my Lego collection and
more but perhaps the two most defining
rounds were the guest teacher round and the
‘Smooshed Together’ round. In the former
many members of staff kindly agreed to film
themselves asking (and answering) a
question. Their contributions were so
appreciated and I enjoyed seeing familiar
faces again as much as everyone else.
Particular thanks to Ms Barnett for her
regular contribution of a scene from history
that she had drawn on her iPad with
impressive skill (cringingly branded as
Barn-art by a quizmaster who now realises
how poorly that works as wordplay). Each
week, culminated with the ‘Smooshed
Together’ round. This was based on a
format appropriated from Richard Osman’s
House of Games but unfortunately renamed
because I repeatedly failed to recall the
official name.
There were frequent problems and I choose
to think gave it a homespun charm…rather
than rendering it a grossly unprofessional
debacle. The first teacher round was
interrupted by me scurrying off camera to
try and stop the answers being read out
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