With the advent of Coronavirus and the tagged along with nationwide lockdown, I save enough time in a day that used to be spent otherwise on office commute.
One day I was thinking about my school teachers, and one of my teachers of whom I was really fond of was my seventh standard chemistry teacher Mrs. Preeti Vaswani. I thought of catching up with her and the only channel where we were still in touch was Facebook.
So I contacted her, one conversation lead to another, and she was kind enough to have an open heart to share with me, how the lockdown and the beginning of virtual methods of teaching are changing her personal and professional life.
Here’s an account of her, in her own words:
It had been a matter of weeks that I switched to a new job that could challenge me and provide me multiple growth opportunities in every sphere.
But as they say, destiny had other plans.
A nationwide lockdown was announced and I who was barely accustomed to the intricacies of the new environment was thrown out of that comfort zone with a bang.
The change all started with the trial and error method of virtual teaching, and I who had a minimalistic interaction with technology was thrown into an unchartered zone. Now, I began the endless process of training, learning, making errors, relearning, and some more of learning.
Corona hasn’t impacted or created a panic as my work pressure did. Still ignorant that the cases have reached to what extent, all I m bothered is about academic plans, Unit tests, attendance, and student feedback.
Being a virtual teacher is no cakewalk. Students expect you to be very thorough of every feature. My first class was a nightmare of a sort, students kept removing each other from the meeting, I was muted several times, the chat-box was filled with comments like ” ma’am, your voice is breaking…please add x,y,z to the meeting they are unable to join ” somebody wanted to be the presenter, the hell of background noises and me telling repeatedly to mute themselves. It was certainly an adventure.
Not only this, but a bigger adventure was also getting my own children to attend the online classes and that too on time. I being engrossed in giving classes, my children had the liberty of dozing off during their online classes, watch multiple things while attending the class, roaming around in the house.
My managing skills were further challenged when in between the break I had to cook, clean the utensils and rush back to the top floor to take the class (kitchen being on the ground floor and my bedrooms on the first floor)
After wrapping up the classes and sharing the feedback on work from home with evidence, I’ve trainings lined up.
So, it is usually 6 in the evening when I have to schedule the meetings for the following day, prepare PPTs, and the lesson plan too.
Then comes the time for preparing and feeding dinner to everybody while attending to multiple queries from students.
It is only after midnight that I am assured that the preparations for tomorrow’s breakfast, cleaning, and classes are all done.
Phew, I am living a job most only dream of but I have lost my comfort in this process. I miss interacting with my kids, helping them through studies. The mother in me gets dominant and I just want to quit the very next day but the fighter in me keeps me going. Just taking each day as it comes, not thinking much about forthcoming tasks (not to forget that I have CBSE evaluations assigned too)
I remind myself that kids are watching, I can’t quit that soon.
PS: I am well trained in delivering online lectures /taking assessments now, every cloud does have a silver lining!
In learning, you will teach and in teaching, you will learn.
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