Shanghai, January 2020

I woke up one morning in the Chinese New Year holidays to find we were not going to return to school on February 3 as expected. Instead, we were told to prepare to teach online. As the pandemic spreads all over the world education has to reinvent itself rapidly. Teachers from all over the world have come together on social media to support each other and share experiences during these difficult times. But as I become more conversant with online teaching, my mind is still not at ease. I am one of the privileged ones lucky enough to have access to a huge number of resources. But how about those who are not so lucky? My thoughts were with the people in my home country, Mozambique, and other developing countries where the vast majority of the population has no access to electricity, let alone online learning.

Lara, a 13-year-old eighth grader, starts her day by helping the family with chores around the shack where they live instead of heading to school as she used to do before the terrifying pandemic. Lara and her family live in Manhiça, in the province of Maputo, Mozambique. She attends the Filipe Nyussi School in Maluana. Neither of Lara’s parents has completed primary education. Her father is the sole income provider and he earns about $45 per month, which he needs to manage carefully between food for the family and education for Lara and her seven brothers and sisters.

Despite the difficulties, Lara’s father says his dream is to see his daughter complete her education. He beams with pride as he describes Lara as a smart, passionate, and dedicated student. Sadly, he also expresses a lot of concern about the uncertain future.

Due to the pandemic, schools in Mozambique have closed. Lara’s daily routine has changed dramatically. She must stay at home while her father walks to school to collect school assignments. When he gets home after work, Lara completes the assignments and later submits them for the teachers to review and grade. Occasionally, her father has had to pick up assignments twice, paying up to 160 meticais (about USD 2.40).

Lara is very eager to learn. She is frustrated that while she would spend four  hours a day learning when she could go to school, her current routine only allows her to study for one hour a day. The family agrees that the current level of education is extremely weak, but unfortunately there is little they can do. They complain about the additional costs for the printed material.

Lara and her family have no access to electricity and consequently have no TV or Internet access at home. This type of situation is very common throughout the country. For this reason, schools have resorted to providing written material prepared by the teachers for students to study at home. Many other children in rural areas, especially girls, face similar challenges. While school is meant to be free, many have complained about the fees for the printed material. In addition, not going to school exposes young girls like Lara to hidden risks of premature marriages and/or pregnancies.

Private schools in urban areas are investing in online schooling for their pupils. However, the level of investment is not standardized and not consistent among schools. Some private schools are moving faster with online platforms and online classes to better meet the needs of their students. Nevertheless, they also rely on parents’ willingness or financial ability to invest in access to technology such as Internet connectivity, computers, and mobile devices.

Studies have shown that the quality of education in Mozambique lags behind that of its neighboring countries and the level of school retention for young girls in the country is still a challenge. On top of that, the country also struggles to provide proper training for its teachers.

Online education is not a feasible option in a country where most people have no access to the Internet. While teachers from all over the world get together in social media to collaborate and give education a face-lift, some teachers and schools in less privileged countries are forgotten.

Nadya Faquir

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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.

In Brazil, where I teach primary and secondary school, 82% of students are in public schools. Due to regional social differences, some of us have to deal with adverse situations. But all regions face related problems and connect in different ways.

I work in a community of extreme poverty, with few resources. Together with teacher colleagues, I have mapped out the best way to work with these students, in view of their social and economic reality. Infrastructure and connectivity resources are lacking, but most families have mobile devices, such as cell phones.

We conducted and made available a study guide to be carried out at home with printed curricular guidelines so that parents could withdraw their children from school at alternate times, so as not to create agglomerations that would pose a danger due to Covid-19. The guidelines included information about the platforms that would be used, such as WhatsApp and social networks, including a Facebook group that we already had for all the classes in the school.

So, in addition to the printed guidelines sent to homes, I started using WhatsApp and Facebook with my classes to disseminate short videos. The videos give them guidance to carry out activities, such as work on various topics from digital literacy to computational thinking and problem-solving skills, but also socio-emotional skills, such as creativity, self-management and self-care.

I proposed to the students some reflections and suggestions for hands-on activities. For example, we made a mechanical hand. I made a sequence of short videos, talking about creativity, telling the story of Leonardo da Vinci and also of sustainability , and the three Rs (recycle, reduce and reuse). Another video talked about the importance of the mechanical hand for industry, saving lives and giving quality of life to people who have lost limbs. Finally, I encouraged them to create a robotic hand using cardboard, string and glue, with a hashtag to post a photo on the Facebook group when the work was done.

WhatsApp also works as a channel to clear up doubts, so I organized daily schedules for my students to let them know when I am available to remedy difficulties and clarify points. This has been effective in helping students to continue their studies.

In addition to my work as a teacher, I write two columns on education in major media. I have used this moment to write to teachers and educational managers about using technology to teach, pointing out information about tools such as Google Classroom, Zoom, Blackboard, Century Tech, and EkStep, among others. I have also written about planning, about designing and applying activities, about assessment and hybrid teaching. I have also provided guidance for class recordings, on topics such as voice intonation, didactic sequence, time, cell phone handling, sound and light, as the vast majority have prepared classes without interactions, only with forums.

I help parents and family with tips and suggestions on how to organize the home study routine (offering practical examples) and how to increase the repertoire of activities. I show them the importance of creating lists of books, films and virtual places, such as museums. I also offer guidance on how to help students to understand whether they have managed to reach all the learning objectives, with such questions as:

• Does the exercise that I got wrong have to do with the content of the previous learning?
• Was there any factor that took my attention away from studies?
• Did I understand the question?
• Did I answer what was asked?
• Did I study the whole topic?

This is a period of new learning for all, in which it is necessary to learn from each other, to listen and find ways to overcome difficulties.

Débora Garofalo is a technology teacher in the public education network and a technology manager at the São Paulo State Education Secretariat. She is an education columnist, a winner of national awards and was in the top 10 of the Varkey Foundation's Global Teacher Prize 2019.

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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.

TEAM is central to my philsophy of teaching and learning. Through 18 years of teaching, I have found TEAM supports learners develop a sense of belonging to their learning community, which is essential for their social, emotional, and cognitive flourishing.

During the COVID-19 crisis maintaining TEAM has been an essential aspect of ensuring ongoing education provision.

TEAM at a Distance

Professional Community Connection

With the onset of the COVID-19 crisis school staff were quick to mobilize. It was an ‘all hands on deck’ approach to support the transition to distance learning. In the first instance, all children were issued Chrome books to take home for the duration of the crisis, and staff development sessions enabled teachers to make the transition to online learning using Google Classroom. These sessions began in a face-to-face environment and transitioned to online as the ‘Stay at Home’ orders were issued. The strength of our professional community emerged in these early days, as colleagues supported one another making the transition, learning new instructional tools, and discussing how to support learning at a distance. From the Suite of Google Apps, teachers adopted Google Classroom, Google Meet, and JamBoard. Within Google Classroom, Google forms are used for quizzes; videos and interactive online activities from Educational support sites like EdPuzzle, Legends of Learning, ABCYa, and YouTube support learners engage with content.

Weekly Google Meet staff meetings have been an asset – promoting teacher and staff well-being, through opportunity to de-stress, share worries and successes, get Education updates, and to reboot for the week to come. These have highlighted for me, the importance of maintaining a strong professional community connection in order to ensure continued teaching and learning.

Professional development (PD) has been available in-school and at district level. Our school Director of Technology and Media, and the district level Technology Integration Specialist have provided 1:1 and small group instructional support on various technologies via ZOOM and Google MEET. I have benefitted directly, learning how to use Flipgrid, Screencastify, and Google Slides to integrate stop animation into my programming.

A strength of this PD support has been the openness to individual interests. My interest in establishing a District-wide Professional Learning Community Forum has been readily embraced by the District Tech., who acted immediately, setting it up for elementary teachers. Teachers can access the space to support one another through professional discussion and shared practice-related experiences.

Building Community through Parental Connection

I have used technology to develop TEAM-like connections with parents. A key part of TEAM has been working with parents to help them become comfortable and connected with the new learning environment. ‘Google Class tours’ using Google Meet, regular emails, and timely Google Meet drop-in sessions allow parents to connect with me to provide feedback, ask questions, and to troubleshoot dilemmas. Parents have become ‘class members’ to Google Classroom and ClassDojo, where they can track their children’s activity and see a portfolio of  their children’s work. Strong parent-teacher-child partnerships have been a tremendous asset to the success of online learning.

Nothing Like Routine: Keeping Students Connected

Developing an online TEAM with the children has been essential to ensure their ongoing learning. Routine has been an important element. Children use Google Classroom to access their daily schedule, and lesson activities. We meet every morning for our Morning Meeting, which involves many of the same routines that defined our first 30 minutes of ‘normal’ in-class activity.  Adding to this, ClassDojo has been an invaluable resource to maintain a focus on working together. I can take attendance, share videos that support Social Emotional Learning topics; use positive incentives; and create student portfolios. All of these features mirror routines the children had in the classroom, which has supported maintaining their class-connectedness.

As a school, we have developed a Daily News programme, written and hosted by our P.E. teacher. This program continues the routines that defined the beginning of our in-school, school day including birthday announcements, certificate awards, prayers and Pledge lead by 6th Graders via video recording.  The Daily News hosts photos that children send in, showcasing activities they have participated in and work that they have completed. It is a valuable sharing time that consolidates our connectedness as a community.

A Different Way to Teach

This crisis has certainly challenged my creativity, innovation, and flexible approaches to practice. It has underscored the importance of continued professional learning. Adopting a distance learning approach with children has demanded complex thinking – trying to ensure the social, emotional aspects are included; trying to be sure the children are connected as learners; and trying to introduce new concepts with tools that don’t always support practices essential for children’s learning, takes resilience, constant reflection, and a willingness to ‘have another go’!

Wendee White

5Th Grade Elementary School Teacher, Syracuse, NY, USA

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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.

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.

Greetings to you all from Turkey. My name is Nurten Akkuş. I am a Global Teacher Prize Top 10 Finalist. I am a preschool teacher –my students are between the ages of 3 and 6. I work in a socio-economically disadvantaged area, where I seek to change and improve people’s lives with education. I attach great importance to paying attention to the individual characteristics of my students. We have made our class and school suitable for the development of my students. We enjoy education by having fun and discovering together. Before the coronavirus entered our lives, we had a great school environment. However, suddenly we had to move this educational environment that we created to digital media.

The virus first reached our country in early March. Everyone was in panic as the world woke up to the epidemic and thousands of people died. Our health ministry and state administrators gave out information about precautions to take. The schools were on vacation. People in our country were called on to “stay home” to try to prevent the spread of the epidemic.

Around the world, we are having a very difficult time. Schools are closed in many countries. We cannot teach face to face. But we are teachers. Our students and their families are always very important to us. It was very difficult to explain this situation to all our students, because we loved learning and school with our students. Families and children were very worried about the virus. I wanted to reduce anxiety before we began teaching online. I had to increase their motivation.

First of all, I talked to the families. I told them that although we need to pay attention to the news, excessive anxiety will be negative in children. I did family education online. We constantly communicate with the groups we have created with them.

Then I spoke to my students online. It was a different experience for them. I told them how we should pay attention to cleaning, and what the virus is, in a simple way suitable for age groups. I asked the children to make part of their home an activity centre. They made their home environment fun.

A great system was made by our Ministry of National Education. Distance education was supported with TV channels. Online training content, game activities and books were prepared. We have set up an online classroom with this system. We share our daily activities there. We also share the daily education flow with the families and enable them to participate in these activities. We carry out many activities with our students such as art, science, plant breeding, vital skills training, free activities, drama, design, mathematics and language education. Through this process, psychological support has been provided for students and families in our country.  

All teachers are constantly communicating with their students in Turkey. Distance education methods and educational content are further developed by our Ministry of National Education. Despite the fact that my students are young, they are obliged to learn via distance learning methods. Families and teachers take an active role in the distance education process. I have given lectures in Turkey and many different countries. But I am giving online conferences right now. Teachers always believe that face-to-face education is very important. This is absolutely true, however, teachers now think that given the critical situation in the world, opportunities for distance education should be well known.

The Varkey Foundation, which works to build the capacity of teachers, offers a great chance for teachers to meet online to discuss methods in different countries of the world.

In a very short time, we have become used to living with digital life and learning. Of course, we miss being with our students and our school. They also miss us. However, my students’ health is very important. And they should not miss out on their education. I hope this epidemic ends as soon as possible in both my country and the rest of the world, so that all people in the world are healthy and that all children can go back to school.

Nurten Akkuş

Nurten Akkuş 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.