Teachers ensure learning continues, despite the pandemic

“Something is better than nothing”, says U.P. school teacher.

By Anoushka Sawhney

At the start of the online classes in March 2020, my fellow teachers and I felt “humse nahi ho payega (we would not be able to do it),” says Rita Sahni, a primary school teacher in Indirapuram Public School, Indirapuram. Mamta Bhatia who teaches the primary section in J.P Academy, Meerut said, “I had to immediately arrange a laptop.”

The Covid-19 induced lockdown impacted all the sectors grossly across India. One of the sectors Covid caused huge disruption in is education. According to UNICEF 2021 report, 1.5-million schools were closed due to Covid-19 in India, further worsening the already crumbling status of education in India, which had over six million girls and boys out of schools even before the advent of the Covid-19 crisis.

While many reports or discussions have focused on the impact of the pandemic on students, teachers were often not part of these discussions and many have also been subjected to abuse or trolls online. New to the world of Zoom, Google meet and Microsoft teams, teachers across the country were fairly impacted.

Babita (name changed), who teaches the primary section in a reputed missionary school in Meerut, says that while it is easy to manage the senior classes, striking a conversation with the primary class students is hard. She says that in offline classes teachers could very well concentrate on the weaker students, but in online classes, the task seems arduous.

Bhatia, who saw the closure of schools as a “holiday” initially started to feel the schedule to be “hectic after some days”. She narrated how the teachers are given less salary now, as many students, mainly from the rural area, who could not afford to study online left school. Others who attended the classes could not “grasp much”. To reach the students and ensure the continuation of learning, she had to explain the lessons to parents who were also new to the concept of virtual school.

“The online classes have their own merits and demerits,” says Sahni. She says that online classes have brought a positive change in the pedagogy and have made the teaching integrated. One can now teach various subjects with “live examples”. “For example, when I taught addition to students, I asked them to bring three potatoes and two tomatoes and while doing this I also explained to them about healthy eating habits and taught the spelling of respective vegetables. This makes the class more exciting for them.”

Babita said that the involvement of parents in the classes is more, making it difficult to decipher the “real progress” of a child. The three teachers -- Rita, Mamta and Babita -- agreed on how the involvement of the parents is more than required, affecting the learning of the students. They also spoke about how some parents complete the exam on behalf of the student and often interrupt the class in between.

Sahni, Bhatia and Babita kept separate sessions with parents to explain to them about the virtual school. “I had made a list and kept a call with all parents to explain them the do’s and don’ts for the online classes,” says Sahni.

However, all three agreed on how this shift to online classes has made them “tech-savvy”. Babita felt that with online classes she could concentrate on her children as well. The three also spoke about how they were provided support from schools and given the training to manage online classes efficiently.

From ‘Can you hear me’, ‘Children, are you listening’ to successfully completing one year of online classes, teachers have shown utmost resilience. As Mahatma Gandhi says, “I have always felt that the true text-book for the pupil is his teacher.” The backbone of schools, teachers are a catalyst in a child’s growth and an integral part of of the Right to Education and education policies.

The reopening of schools is “most anticipated”, said Dr Rukmini Banerji, CEO of Pratham in an interview with Yamini Aiyar, President and Chief Executive of Centre for Policy Research. Until then, as Bhatia, while speaking about the difficulty of online classes, says, “something is better than nothing.”

Cover image credit: The Indian Express