Gaywood Primary pupil's Covid poem
The Year 6 student is the daughter of key workers
An 11-year-old schoolgirl's poem about life after the pandemic has captured the imagination of many and become a lockdown hit.
Annie Overton, who is in Year Six at Gaywood Primary School in King's Lynn, is the daughter of key workers, and has been attending school three days a week during lockdown.
She wrote the poem "I dream of a time" in a PHSE (personal, social, health and economic) class.
"I dream of a time/Where masks are for Halloween/And gloves are for the Winter.
"I dream of a time/Where 2 metres is tall/And 6 is just a number.
"I dream of a time/When cleaning is boring/And rules are part of a game.
"I dream of a time/Where supermarkets aren't exciting/And shields are made of metal.
"I dream of a time/When our freedom returns/And COVID is no longer."
Her simple but forward-looking child's eye view of the current situation has touched a nerve with many people in her school community and on social media locally, but she is taking all the praise in her stride.
She said:
"I thought what do I know about COVID and what do I want to feel like after, and I just got on with it."
Being at school during lockdown, she said is "exactly the same" just with fewer classmates, but she said the new environment had helped her make some new friends.
Her father Will is a Year Six teacher at Gaywood, which is part of the West Norfolk Academies Trust, and also the school's lead in maths, a subject Annie says she prefers to English.
He said:
"In PHSE we let them have a good old moan about COVID, to get how they were feeling off their chests, but we decided to follow it up with something positive, by getting them to write a poem about how they think life will be when we get back to normal.
"I'm a teacher and my wife's a nurse at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, so we're both working pretty much as normal, and the children are at school, so I don't think what she wrote is particularly influenced by us having changed circumstances, she's just bright and so for her, it's just another piece of classroom exercise."
The poem has been an immediate hit, as a snapshot of what will one day become part of 21st century history, but in the eyes of the poet, it is another assignment.
Annie said:
"I've not really thought about how it will be looking back.
"To me, it's just school work."