Teachers work hard to deliver online classes in tough conditions

For the last four months, Manju Bala Bhardwaj, an English teacher at a government school, has been teaching her classes online.

For the last four months, Manju Bala Bhardwaj, an English teacher at a government school, has been teaching her classes online.

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From 8 am till 5 pm, Bhardwaj stays glued to her phone as she juggles students’ queries on WhatsApp and calls while giving out notes and assignments. Once she is done with classes for the day, the 44-year-old starts preparing and recording video lessons for the next day. With a black marker in her hands, she stands before a whiteboard and delivers the lesson to an imaginary audience while her son, a college-going student, films her on a mobile phone.

“There is hardly any time left after classes to focus on other things. The cycle of planning, preparing, recording, along with daily classes and feedback calls to parents is taxing,” said Bhardwaj.

While video lessons are not a compulsion for government schools, Bhardwaj decided to test the waters after reading about private schools that were quick to adopt online lessons in the wake of the nationwide lockdown that was imposed in March to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease.

“Many students in government schools like ours are not familiar with spoken English. I felt that recording lessons would help in comprehension,” said Bhardwaj, who had to get her phone repaired after it crashed under the load of the videos within the first week.

Over the past few months, Bhardwaj has also learned the tricks of the trade from her sons.

“I don’t have a tripod or stand. With their classes too going on, even my sons are not available at all times. I made notes of how to do it myself so that I am prepared for such days. Despite all this, it is still daunting,” she said.

Adding to the technological challenges are the online abuses and uncharitable remarks from students and parents, and distractions.

Deepika Chauhan, a private school teacher, said, “A greater part of the class goes in asking children to mute or unmute the mic or not use the chatbox. There is a lot of disruption. They keep sending emoticons in the chatbox and texts unrelated to the class. Sometimes when we ask children to shut the mic, some overprotective parents get hurt and write emails complaining about us.”

She recalled an instance where a class 4 student used an expletive against a teacher using the chatbox. “The teacher was shell shocked. When she took up the issue with the parents, they were apologetic but insisted that the child’s account had been hacked,” said Chauhan.

With many parents refusing or unable to pay fees, salary cuts have demoralised teachers too. “In addition, the school has asked us to report for work if we want to receive full salary,” said Chauhan.

Deepali, a music teacher, said that while teachers were putting double the amount of work to make online classes work, parents and school educators felt that these classes “were not good enough”.

“I had never imagined that I’d be teaching Indian classical music through a laptop screen,” she said. “Pulling off these classes has been a Herculean task. Schools and parents, however, don’t recognise our effort. We are all exhausted but holding on to our jobs is the priority right now. Moreover, I have also learned many new things courtesy the shift in teaching methods.”

School principals said that coronavirus had caused a big change in transmission of lessons and coping with the effects of the shift was hard to digest for all stakeholders, including teachers.

Anshu Arora, principal, Amity International School, Sector 43, said that it was important to recognise that teachers belonged to a wide spectrum, and carrying on with the show individually was challenging. “While younger teachers are adept in using the interfaces, not all teachers are familiar with the technology. A lot of hand-holding was needed. Teachers need to be supported by schools,” said Arora. She said the school was providing support by having additional co-teachers in every class.

Manoj Kaushik, coordinator, program education technology, SCERT Haryana, said that the department was aware of the technological constraints and had responded. “We brought teachers together on a WhatsApp group and shared explainer videos about basics of recording lectures and delivering live lectures as and when the need arose,” said Kaushik. “Not everything can be taught through training. Sometimes, there are many things that one learns through experiences.”

Aditi Misra, principal, Delhi Public School, Sector 45, said that the school had been engaging with the CBSE and NCERT regarding possible ways of addressing the digital divide that government school students and teachers were facing. “Digital divide is worrying and needs to be addressed at some level. We have shared necessary teaching resources with two government schools that we have adopted,” said Misra.