My Expressions

Our district was the first one to close as we received some of the early cases on COVID-19. We canceled all the exams in March, except grade 8, which is our senior-most class and assessed the students on their past performance.

In Kerala, we have summer break immediately after the exams, this year we did a Summer Camp that too online. Though we were not fully geared to take up things through technology, the summer camp came very handily. It helped our teachers and students to transition online platform.

I would like to thank our management and our president, who took a visionary decision on online classes. On a daily basis, we had meetings and discussions. We explored many platforms. Zoom was the easiest of all the platforms. We used Google classrooms, Kahoot and various interactive tools

Resistance came from all quarters. Parents and teachers too. But students were the easiest. Students adjusted really fast well.

But the teacher community surprised me the most. They were never using technology much before the pandemic, not even typing their question papers, they are the ones who took the biggest leap. They have adjusted and adapted brilliantly to the new learning system. However, the online learning platform continues to be very challenging and the teachers have to put in so many more hours of hard work and thought of interesting online methods to sustain the interest of the students on a daily basis.

In our community, many parents are abroad. So essentially, we had to bring grandparents on board for this. Parents like online classes.

I do not think this is a ‘new normal’. This will also pass in a few months but at the same time, we have to think of creative and innovative ways to enhance the learning of the student whether online or otherwise. We have to utilize this time to equip ourselves with the latest technology and otherwise. If it was not for this situation….we would never have changed for the better.

The public administration is doing its best to contain the spread of the virus. The school management has extended all the support to enhance the online teaching-learning methodologies for the students and teachers. We have to make the best use of all the support, request and convince the parents of the needs of the time and be ready and willing to unlearn, relearn, adapt and implement the best methods and do our best to help contain the virus so that the schools re-open soon and we can think of normalcy.

My advice to everyone remains the same. This too shall pass. Nothing can replace a classroom learning situation. However, we have been forced into practicing challenging online learning strategies and have been introduced to a whole new world of technological learning. We, as a country would not have even thought about it in other circumstances. Our teachers have adapted so beautifully to the technology-aided learning. Let’s use this opportunity to learn everything about online learning and continue to utilize it even after the pandemic times.

Parents have to be open-minded and we need all their help and support. The students have adapted brilliantly.

I admire what the Team at Curious Times has been doing especially in the past few months. Looking at it by way of growing participation, my suggestions are that
1. You may soon have to come out with weekly or bi-weekly publications
2. You may have to have separate editions for various age groups.

All the very best to the Team at Curious Times!

To watch Ms. Rachel Ignatus’ full interview with Curious Times Founder, Deepti Beri, click here:

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