I am watching my ten years son attending school via online classes, for two years now. The schools were completely caught off-guard in preparing their teachers and support staff for online teaching methods, the engagement with students, assignments, and the entire experience of students-teachers interactions.
- It asks for a lot of structural and mental adjustments for teachers—teaching online when the kids can be, non-serious, watching each others’ background in the room, having food, and then tech glitches.
- Teachers know that some of the parents can be around their child, sort of monitoring or even evaluating the teaching style. It is stressful. Imagine you writing the code or drawing a screen when the manager is standing close and watching you.
- Teachers have been more patient, more polite, and more aware and alert because to address or to keep an eye on all or most of the students in the class is a challenge, sometimes sharing screen, or doing mute or unmute.
While the schools have been teaching online for two years now, here are a few areas where they need to continue evolving and doing better.
- Sometimes I heard them saying—”Students, please put yourself on mute, or ask your mother or father to leave you alone for the class.” Imagine a student who is living with a single parent, because of separation or a tragedy. It might just break the child for the moment.
- Or—”Students, please move to another room if there is some background noise around you, or if someone else is in the same room.” So many students do not have an exclusive room to attend their classes; they might be living in a one-room apartment. Such statements can hurt them.
- Or—”Students, please take the help of your grandfather or grandmother if they are around at home.” There might be cases particularly in Covid, when they might have lost an elder in the family. Again, it leaves the student in tears.
Now that the schools and teachers have settled into this technology-driven online teaching, schools need to explore the *experience* side of schooling now where it is entirely about people and not about technology.
