Resurrecting the Bard – a tale of Home Schooling Help in Lockdown

As we face several more weeks and maybe months in our various forms of lockdown across the UK, never has there been a more challenging test of resilience for many business professionals who are also parents, as we try and navigate another round of home-schooling whilst trying to hold down demanding roles of our own. At Livingston James  it is fair to say that we are most comfortable when our roles involve complex interviewing methodology, psychometric testing, building relationships, and providing a platform for Business Leaders and Executives to make life changing career moves. Now we simultaneously face something else. A combination of shouts of “What’s a fronted adverbial”, “Let’s make a bird feeder out of a cardboard tube”, “What’s the perimeter of the table?” “I don’t understand how to do this!” ……. Sound familiar?

Today it is the 25^{th of} January. Burns Night, and my little boy was asked to pretend to Interview Robert Burns and come back with interesting facts. With moans that he wouldn’t do it as it wasn’t possible, given Burns was no longer alive, I brought this problem to the surface at our Monday morning meeting. It may have been a moment of madness but one of my very kind colleagues agreed to take 20 minutes out of his packed schedule to pretend to be our famous Bard of Ayrshire and facilitated a very different type of interview. Raising this renowned poet from the grave to be grilled by 10 year olds was no easy task. This has been by far the highlight of home-schooling so far.  Thank you, Ben Walker. Every day is a school day after all.

To contact Jacqui Paterson email [email protected]