Teaching Learning Process During Pandemic

5 months ago, before the pandemic enters India, I took appointment orders as a Secondary grade teacher at MPUPS Raparthy, Kalher Mandal Sangareddy Dist. Although newly appointed I was Deputed to High School in my Mandal where there is a lack of subject teachers. The connection between my School children and me was so less as unexpected locked down due to covid-19. 

The time between March 15th  to August 25th, the government wasn't took any steps regarding online classes. We used to contact our students through Mobile Phones to know our students to make sure whether they are healthy, are following Covid Rules, and know about village conditions.  After 15th August the government is ready to start online classes but they wanted to know resources for online sessions. It's a very tough call for all the teachers to finding out the resources for every student. We visited the entire village and surveyed to find out the resources for a child to attend online classes.

We came to notice that most of the children don't have connectivity to Online Classes due to a lack of televisions and mobile phones.

We, Teachers of our School decided to divide children and adopt Students to arrange the resources to attend online classes. I adjusted my adopted children with other students who have the connectivity to attend online sessions. I regularly kept in touch with them to enquire their attention and to check their progress. From September 1 government started telecasting online classes through DD Yadagiri and T SAT Vidya. As there is less connection to watch online classes the initiation regarding the online classes was not so successful due to family issues, covid tension, and financial problems in homes of Children. I created WhatsApp groups to send schedules of Online Classes and worksheets for children. later I used to collect from the children and correct them. For the students who don't have Smart Phones, we distributed them in hand and collected them later to check the progress. Still, online classes are going on.

I feel It's time for the physical Classes too.

Even though Govt isn't started Physical Classes, Few Students daily come to our School and spend some quality time with us to gain knowledge.

Village Survey and Worksheets Distribution 

One of my students attending online class :

Coming to professional life, I feel I got much time to develop my skills as a teacher and as a techie. One thing I admit that, rather than teaching children, I spent most of the time developing myself as a teacher by attending various webinars throughout pandemic from several Organizations like SCERT Telanagana, ELTA TS, ELTA W(U), Azim Premji University- Bangalore, DIET Medak. With all these, I improved my teaching skills and especially ICT skills. I learned tools like zoom, Google meet, bigbluebutton, tweencraft, canvas, Padlet, Canva, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, G-sites, G-forms, etc. 

I participated as a Mentee in an English language proficiency course in the pilot batch(90 Days) in April. This course helped me to communicate better in English. Later I contributed my services as a mentor for the same program for the next batches.

With the help of my friends and fellow teachers, I Conducted nearly 20 webinars to make awareness on online tools for effective online classroom presentations for Fellow Teachers and Students.

My Lecture on ELTA Platform

https://photos.app.goo.gl/WitNua5HaUiKLzqf7

WEBINARS I CONDUCTED(20)

Next thing I would like to convert all these learnings that learned during pandemic time into real classroom practice in forthcoming days to develop myself as a better Teacher than earlier.

If at all, Any pandemic occurs in the future, This pandemic taught us so many lessons. It emphasized the importance of updating for teachers and transformation from being Conventional mode working of Schools. I believe most of the Teachers taught lessons from this pandemic and They are ready with their present their Skills Online also if it's necessary.