Schools have been reeling under lockdown for two years and there is uncertainty looming in 2022 as well. Will the open-shut routines continue? UNESCO is building futures literacy globally who organise Future Labs in schools and communities. It’s important because it is images of the future that drive our current readiness to plan, prepare, invest, and embrace change. There is a need to become more ‘futures literate’ community.
Working from home and online learning has gone well with most students so far but students and teachers want to return to school as social isolation is showing its effect on the emotional health and well-being.
DR LAKSHMI KUMAR
Founder Director
The Orchid School, Pune
Students’ behaviour during the online learning, in certain cases borders on annoyance and frustration, we can make the return to school a joyful, effective, and wholesome process of learning.
Let us picturise (there are exceptions) after two years of online learning:
- Students are used to shorter school days to restrict the screen time and other such genuine concerns and reasons. However, screen time has gone up with students attending coaching classes, online courses, tuitions or simply because students now have abundant freedom with gadgets.
- Online learning has highlighted the inequities including the home environment when videos are kept on. This has made students from EBW community feel awkward and vulnerable.
- Families moved to the villages for prolonged time, so school reopening was not making any difference to the students who have gone to remote villages.
- Students’ sleep cycle has gone for a toss that many of them appear sleepy / sleepwalk during morning hours and fall asleep during afternoon hours.
- They join online not necessarilyin any formal school uniform / attire. Memes on online dress code has given us an image of our students in pyjamas, lounging on sofa / beds and in casual postures.
- The lunch breaks and mid-morning snack breaks are not as per the school timetable / bell. Some are having breakfast/ snacks while online classes are on.
- They can mute themselves and the teachers. Coming on video is optional and ready-made excuses are shared for not being able to put on the video.
- If they have access to multiple gadgets, they are surfing internet while “attending“ online classes.
- They join classes for attendance, but their engagement is high on other social media updates.
- Few hands go up for discussion, often with stone silence and tiles with initials staring at the teacher. This is observed more in higher classes.
- Physical fitness sessions are often skipped.
- Many of them, for past couple of years are used to less writing , online assessments/ exam cancellations and better scores that has not much corelation to their competence. Education systems around the world are urgently recalibrating, realising that they are dangerously outdated.
Teaching to learning culture:
As lockdowns ease and schools start to reopen in some places across our region, it’s as good a time as any to take stock and look at the likely future of education. How do we make education fit for the post-COVID world?
We need to give our students some time to overcome withdrawal symptoms from the above and not push the peripherals to the core of coming back to school.
- Explore blended learning as an option / choice and once a week online classes for senior students.
- Create listening posts driven by counsellors/ mental health professionals – circle time where students get to talk about their life, experiences, family, struggles, fears or just about anything under the sun.
- Give priority for all types of learning that got left behind or taken a back seat during online learning. For example, all hands skills, co-scholastics, fine arts and physical fitness and sports must have big time allocation in physical schooling.
- Longer breaks for social interactions and hang-out conversations.
- Learning through play/ creative art / music is often an important factor in supporting creativity.
- Students don’t return to school to sit inside four walls. So, shift your classes to outdoor spaces as much as possible.
- Don’t rush to assess the learning gaps. Two years deprivation cannot and must not be bridged in few months. • Design curriculum where creative skill development is explicitly incorporated.
- When navigating difficult times and new challenges, focus is on emotional, social well-being of our students.
- Express gratitude to parents via personalised notes / greetings for trusting the school during most difficult times.
- Students coming for the first time to physical schools (Kindergarten, grades 1 & 2 students) need support for first month to get familiar with people and routines. They have not been in any formal learning space since their birth. Wherever possible, very young learners must be off screen time and be in physical school.
- Back to basics for all – plenty of reading and writing in addition to systematic approach to revisit basics of digital literacy.
- Embed the skill of learning to learn and self -assessment students can be self-reliant and take ownership to learning.
A whole-school approach is required to imagine the future so we can raise quality and standards across the entire school and enable sustainable change. Teachers will play critical role for embracing the change. It is important to dedicate sufficient time and quality resources to build teachers’ expertise and buy-in around reform.
Children who start school from now on will grow up to be the workforce in a digital-first world that will demand new skills and new ways of thinking. To succeed in life and at work, they will need all the social, emotional, and academic support they can get rich and flexible learning experiences that will differ vastly from their schooldays before pandemic times.
