By Shraddha Saikia and Meghna MS Rodborne
SHILLONG, March 16: A prolonged break of close to two years where students struggled with adaptability, lack of self-motivation, time management and technical glitches has finally come to an end with the month of March bringing about a much-awaited relief to kids, parents and teachers alike.
The city streets are buzzing once again as students return to schools. The energy is palpable and contagious.
Taking sense of the new spirit, The Shillong Times set out to talk to school going students, parents and teachers of the city. And what followed next, was an interesting adventure into the minds of Shillongites and their pandemic-stricken wards.
A bunch of middle-school kids frolicking at Don Bosco Square gave the usual answers when asked why regular classes were better than online learning.
“It is not boring like in online classes; we get to be with friends; we sit in the class, and we have fun,” they all said. A young girl from the lot added the pleasures of wearing her beloved school uniform to the list, while another student appreciated his long-due lunch break at school.
On being asked how she spent her time during the lockdown, a sixth standard student from Pine Mount School quipped: “I slept, ate and basically just converted oxygen into carbon dioxide, the basic functions of a human being.”
However, high-schoolers had a different take on the pandemic situation.
Sanrina Marak, a Class X student of St. Margaret’s HS School came up with facts as she said, “In online classes, we never asked for any explanation. Subjects and topics just seemed very difficult. But things are different now. We actually understand the concepts.”
Sanrina went on to highlight the importance of the ‘board’ in her classroom. “Math and Science were the most difficult subjects to deal with in the online system. Now, with the sums and diagrams dissected in front of us, they seem to be the easiest,” she said.
The haphazard completion of syllabus was a bitter pill to swallow, a teacher from Seven Set Annexe HS School admitted. In her words, academic progress of students was slow and they were lagging behind. “As a teacher for the primary classes, I have to revise everything that the kids should have learned in the past two years. I am not able to start with the lessons for the new session because of this backlog,” she said.
When it came to the parents, ‘difficult’ was the most pronounced answer to the question: “How were the online classes in the last two years?”
Frowned eyebrows and scrounging of noses at the mere mention of the word ‘online’ gave out much more than a glimpse into the frustrated device-gazing, disinterested learning and hectic class scheduling that their children had to go through, not very long ago.
Some parents expressed concern over their children’s ever-increasing screen time, while others complained about the serious lack of reading, writing and speaking abilities. A parent also spoke about how the schools have eased their daily schedules. “All I have to do now is get them ready for school, drop them off and pick them up after some hours,” she said.
An interesting input was forwarded by another parent when he talked about the habitual lack of enthusiasm in children. “I have seen my neighbours’ kids as they grow,” he said. “Earlier, they were excited at the thought of going to school. 4-5 kids from the same locality walk together to school was a sight to behold. Then the pandemic happened. Now, each one of them has to be dragged out to school and their interest is gone.”
It is quite an irony that schools have reopened and students are happily returning to their classrooms but their struggles are far from over. Regular classes will be a challenge and so will be the protocols brought about by the pandemic.
Wearing of masks at all times, maintaining physical distancing from friends and the words of caution against sharing tiffin is likely to have detrimental effects on a student’s social life in the school.
While these precautions are necessary to keep a check on the spread of the virus, one might also observe that the basic pleasures of being a school student are gone, as of now.
However, in the words of a parent, since this is supposedly the new normal for the foreseeable future, students have to maintain the right balance between pleasure and precaution.