Perseverance and Resilience: How to land on Earth in the Covid19 era

Eleni Armaou, Student Oriented Services (SOS) and Additional Learning Needs (ALN) Coordinator
Metropolitan School of Frankfurt

Perseverance and Resilience: How to land on Earth in the Covid19 era and Learn Effectively in an International School 

…and touchdown confirmed!

This past week Humanity has witnessed a great achievement in Space Travel which took eight months to be completed. The Perseverance vehicle reached the surface of Mars. The name of the vehicle is so important, so distinctive, for us, earthlings, living in the era of the 2021 pandemic, of social and political upheaval, and of financial insecurity.  It takes time for important decisions, crucial steps, and successful milestones to be reached, in life, in work, at school.

Since NASA’s Perseverance touched down on Mars on 18 February, it has been researching the atmosphere, rocky formations and rocks, air and chemical composition of the planet. Ken Farley at NASA’s  Jet Propulsion Laboratory ( JPL) in California, during a presentation at the virtual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference on 16 March 2021, reported: “We had no major technical issues…The rover’s first drive on 4 March-which lasted 33 minutes and covered about 6.5 meters-demonstrated that it can, in fact, rove, and the other tests are going smoothly as well, he said. Perseverance has a microphone, which has allowed us to hear the Red Planet for the first time. It recorded more than 16 minutes of audio as it drove around Mars on 7 March. And Dave Gruel ( JPL) stated:  IF I heard these sounds, I would pull over and call for a tow. But if you take a minute to consider what you are hearing and where it was recorded, it makes perfect sense.”

Such a great adventure undoubtedly took a lot of time and will require even more in order to be completed and provided Scientists with the answers they are looking for.

But Time is only one aspect, one dimension. The other ones, the most paramount, are Perseverance and Resilience, our IB AtL skills, which can help us to go one step further and not to quit under the pressure of everyday hurdles, personal obstacles, and work or family predicaments.

In our students’ life, there are a lot of challenging, rocky moments and great barriers. But at the core of learning, at the absolute heart of every learning experience, there is failure or error or miscalculations which help us immensely in locating the correct way ( even if we only discover 1000 ways that do not work as Thomas Edison’s quote goes: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”) in finding the right mental and thinking route and in reaching our Learning Goals.

In our journey to discover the limitless universe of our capabilities and skills, resilience, perseverance, adaptability, spirit, curiosity, and ingenuity are our vessels.

What do you think about the points raised in this article? We’d love to have your thoughts below.

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