As a head teacher, I have always felt that teaching means not only getting the curricular content right and imparting that knowledge. It also means encouraging children to think for themselves by making them mindful of their lives and giving them the skills they need to go about various things. I have always felt that the usual school processes should not be so rigid. Until children spend some extra time sitting idle, how will they realize the power of discipline and commitment?
The Covid-19 lockdown measures have really helped me find the answer to a question that has been nudging me for a long time: “Is it really necessary that learning and teaching should be confined to the four walls of the classroom? The new answer in this situation comes out to be “Absolutely not”. Technology has really made this big globe local to us. Physical presence hardly matters. What really matters is the right tools and the pertinent approach to use them.
In 2008 I read that there is a lot of work going on to make things e-accessible and that the future will bring user-friendly and self-teaching devices. I didn’t realize this until this lockdown that that world has arrived. Within a few days I had learnt to use and operate Zoom, Jitsy, Microsoft Team, Google Hangouts and many other platforms. The e-world has become the new reality!
Within a week I was teaching my students through an app. I received formal training from agencies but I learned most things by testing and trying. At first it wasn’t an easy to survive on e-mode (electronic/virtual/online mode) but after a few days I could see that technology does work most of the time, despite occasional disturbances, virtual distractions and audio-video problems. Initially I thought teaching through this new delivery mode was one-way communication but soon I realized that the sessions can be made lively by adding polls, surveys and videos sandwiched in between the sessions. The technology stunned me because in rural schools we just cannot afford to build in so much variety.
In the first few days, it was more a kind of game and the attendance of the students was also high but soon I realized that attendance was dropping and the joy of a new game was over. The reasons could be many: maybe a network problem, maybe the voice wasn’t audible for the students, maybe they were so busy helping the fathers harvest and mothers to cook, maybe my screen wasn’t visible or – the worst one! – perhaps my class wasn’t interesting. When I checked the chat box, however, suddenly the conversations became two-way – the children had been on mute. They started to share their problems in the chat box.
As for myself, I was feeling distracted due to various noises but soon I realized that I needed to stop multitasking and be mindful and convey the same to my students. I finally taught them a HOTS (high order thinking skill) of mindfulness.
Whenever you feel that response is weak and attendance is poor, students are just a phone call away. Good communication and effectively convincing students why they need to study comes handy. And my country, India, has a family-oriented culture so it is always easy to make calls to parents and get the folks back to classes.
However, bad networks, high charges for data and high costs for devices are a real challenge. These could be removed by providing a free, subsidized network. Village and city libraries could be converted into virtual rooms with laptops, tablets and internet connections. If learning is free, anybody has the power to become anything.
Dr Neeru Arora
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This piece is part of the Teacher Task Force’s #TeachersVoices campaign, created to bring forward the experiences of teachers working every day to ensure their students continue to benefit from a quality education despite the COVID-19 pandemic. To participate, go to our dedicated webpage.
They say change is the only constant in your life but who would have expected the change to be so drastic that it questions your chances of survival? CNM School caters to more than 3000 students. We conducted regular classes until 13th March when the Government told us to close. Initially we were to reopen on 31st March, but closure has now been extended till 3rd May, with talk that it will be further extended to 18th May.
On Monday 16th March, teachers went to school to discuss and assess the way forward. We organized many meetings and then took all our resources home to prepare for the coming weeks. In the meantime, some teachers created teaching videos. We uploaded them so everyone had access and parents were ecstatic.
On 18th March, the closed school to everyone, so the only available helpline and support were the online classes conducted from home. Within 3 days, we had made around 50 teaching videos, uploaded worksheets and presentations on our school portal but it did not seem enough. The communication seemed one way. We were teaching but was there learning happening? Were students even accessing the material? Was there any way we could monitor student’s engagement and enthusiasm?
The following week we began Zoom classes for our older students, teachers began creating 1-hour teaching slot where students logged in meaning learning now seemed two way. We could see our students, answer their questions and upload files. However, there was still a hitch. What should we do for students unable to log in? How do we ensure the 1-hour classes were available for them to rerun and revisit? How do we post an assessment after completion of a unit to test learning?
Thus, while we continued with our teaching videos and Zoom classes, we needed to look for something more to gather students on a common platform. So, I connected with LabXchange, a free online platform which integrates learning and research experiences initially through Twitter. On Wednesday 25th March, I spoke with Ilyana and Jessica from LabXchange to discuss training for the platform and the support desired. I also confirmed with my teachers their willingness to learn and use this new platform. On Friday 27th March, a training session for around 85 teachers was conducted which lasted an hour and a half. The training went very well and the next day, our accounts were created under “SVKM CNM school” and students were added. The platform let teachers use their virtual online material and, most importantly laboratory simulations, along with their own personal teaching materials. It allowed testing and for materials to be reused, and for the student to revisit at anytime. LabXchange completely met our teaching and learning needs.
Every day the news and social media were reporting that the numbers of people affected by COVID-19 are increasing and that everyone needs to take vital precautions. Panic had become a way of life. We wanted to help students with their mental health and so, on our school Facebook page, we created live events every day from Monday to Friday from 4 pm to 4:30 pm where we could reach out to our students through Yoga, cooking, music, games, quiz and stories. We created a timetable for teachers when they would go online for their students, along with a co-host, to lead a lively and positive event through which students could share their feelings through comments and emoticons.
We never knew that online teaching could be as powerful as face to face teaching and that with the advent of a virus, the whole world would have to refocus, realign and redesign the definition of life, work and play. The crisis has brought us completely to our knees but it has also opened windows to demonstrate immense gratitude to mother nature and all human beings.
Kavita Sanghvi
Kavita Sanghvi was one of the finalists of the Varkey Foundation's Global Teacher Prize.
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This piece is part of the Teacher Task Force’s #TeachersVoices campaign, created to bring forward the experiences of teachers working every day to ensure their students continue to benefit from a quality education despite the COVID-19 pandemic. To participate, go to our dedicated webpage.