By Avneal Syiem Thounaojam
Our school was going on in full swing in March 2020 and I was in the last few weeks of class IV (Four). Everyone in the class was in a good mood as we had completed a whole lot of grades. My friends and I were enjoying the last few weeks of school and our mothers had a line of outings planned for us. My parents were ready with plans for the session break as well as the summer holidays. Little did I know what havoc Covid 19 would play in our lives. While enjoying a nice weekend we received a notice from La Martiniere that the school would be closed from Monday indefinitely. I was super happy but as the first week came to an end I began thinking more wisely and realised the lockdown meant I would not be able to meet my friends (urghhh)!! The lockdown also meant no one could travel anywhere….Oh NO! I started shouting inside my head “does this mean all the plans my parents had for us to see Vietnam and also to go visit my aunt in USA would be cancelled??? YES!!!! Aaaahhhhhrgh………!!!!! Okay I cannot scream anymore.
The pandemic started to spread rapidly everywhere in the world and there was no way that school could open in all this chaos. I had a gala time at home though I really wanted to go outdoors. In April as I saw my father doing all his work from home, a thought came to my mind……… if companies like MSD, Pharmaceuticals could have online video conferences to discuss ideas, explain things etc why can’t schools do the same. Online platforms would be used to send work and there would be online video conferences for school. It turned out that I was not the only one with this thought. After the session break holidays my school started classes with such video conferences.
The first platform used for these online classes was called ‘Extramarks’. Extramarks was not the best for online classes, that award goes to our present platform ‘ZOOOOOOOOOOOM’, but I sort of liked it. On Extramarks we could not switch on our videos without permission, it must have been very boring for the teachers to teach a screen, also children might have been walking up and down while listening to the teachers!!! This is just my guess please do not take it seriously, if I did this I would have been ‘NUKED’ and I would have been stuck to the chair with superglue by my mother. Initially, we did not have to wear our school uniform, I felt really cool attending school in my casual wear. After the summer holidays, things changed, it was compulsory to wear school uniform. Now I wake up in the morning, get ready for school, pretend like I am picking up my school bag, say BYEEEE MUM…. open the door and enter my room!!! Bye Daddy does not come out automatically because in the normal school days I would say bye to him at the school gate.
It was a good decision by the school to break the Covid-imposed holiday and begin online classes because I was enjoying myself too much having a ball of a time while studies took a backseat far behind in my brain. Online classes are good for me (except for the eye pain and the headaches that come sometimes), I have been able to concentrate very well and understand what is being taught easily. In the online platform teachers can mute us so it is silent when they teach …..imagine how easy it would be for them if they could just press a button to stop all the screaming and shouting that happens in the actual classroom!!!!! Have you ever been late for school? It is very embarrassing and irritating is it not? On ZOOM, this does not usually happen. The teacher sends the meeting ID and password 10 minutes before, we join and wait and once the teacher logs in, we ZOOOOOOM into the class! There have been times I have missed a class though, not because I did not want to join or was late and locked out but because the internet started playing the game of ‘Good connection ‡? Bad connection’. This is one big problem with online classes. Oh! Can you imagine we get a whooping 20 minutes break after every class, this would have been really great during normal school where we had friends to play and talk with.
Online classes have been good but I do miss my friends, I miss the violin classes, the PE classes, I really miss the time our mothers give us to play together for a while after school. The dance class by Sir Imtiaz Nehal is fun, they take away a bit of my sadness of not meeting friends, I really enjoy twirling and turning ‘ziggoty’, ‘ziggety’, ‘ziprapety’ to Sir’s wonderful music.
When I look back, I wonder how bored I would have been if school had not started. My daily life would have been eat, read, play, sleep………. after a while I would have run out of books to read then it would have been just eat, play, sleep. The only play I can enjoy alone is building with my Lego, I cannot imagine how long I would have been able to carry on playing continuously alone. Maybe it would have finally been EAT, SLEEP, EAT, SLEEP, EAT, SLEEP. Our online classes are very nice and there are two main groups of people who I want to thank for helping me continue my studies – the teachers for teaching us so nicely in these troubling times and my parents for providing me with the necessary gadgets, devices and other things I need.
I know there are many children who do not even have a room of their own or a gadget to attend school online; some families do not have a TV or radio for tuning in to learning channels. I hope they will be able to somehow continue with their studies. This is also another reason why I am thankful that my classmates and I are able to attend school easily even in all this mayhem. I am sure our teachers have put in a lot of time and effort to prepare for the classes for us and some of them have had to take time out to learn the new way of teaching.
Online classes rock!! My school rocks!!! but most of all my teachers rock!!!! I wish I could shout out three cheers to my teachers HIP HIP HURRAY!! HIP HIP HURRAY!! HIP HIP HURRAY!!
(Avneal Syiem Thounaojam is 10 years old and lives with his parents in Kolkata.Email: [email protected])