Teachers are known to be the building blocks of society because they shape up and give direction to the future generation. They are the counsellors, tutors, scholars, and most importantly your child’s first friend. When I became a teacher it was not by choice, eight years down the lane, I have grown to love my profession.
Our life was moving on a particular track but since COVID-19 it felt like we have to learn everything from scratch. People often talk about the stress that students have to deal with due to online education but unfortunately teachers have been neglected in this picture. They too have faced difficulties in grasping the reins of technology and this new methodology.
Countries providing quality education are familiar with online teaching methods but teachers in Pakistan have faced many impediments of e-learning. Instead of students, gadgets became our new friends, zoom, google meet and google classrooms were the teaching forums that we were not acquainted with. Despite attending workshops or courses I have taken during my career I was never taught how to use them. Along with this change came the long tiring hours of getting familiar with the platform, so we can use it to benefit the students’ curriculum and make this transition from the classroom learning to e-learning easier for them.
Our workplaces thought that we are available for them round the clock. From the standard 9 to 5 job it became a 24hr working process for us because other than the online classes, the online assignment and paper checking techniques also were time consuming. During the day we had to handle the online classes and later design the lesson plan for the next day. For a non tech savvy person like me, it took me hours to even choose the perfect app for assignment checking. Screen time was increased for both the students and the teachers.
As the school session ends, we missed out on watching the pupils grow into smarter and better versions of themselves
Parents too faced a lot of difficulty in uploading the assignments on the systems and that again became the responsibility of the teacher to guide them how to do it. The classroom that was the teacher’s own space became an open room for the parents too. Initially some of us were not comfortable with the online classes because the parents would be sitting with the children all the time, noticing your every move.
Next came the hurdle of failing internet connection. As we all know the condition of load shedding in our country. To overcome this hurdle we had to buy new gadgets and connections which were not friendly on the pocket. Teaching is already a low-paid profession in our country, and the extra burden of buying these gadgets left us with little money because not all institutions were willing to facilitate teachers with the new needs. As if this was not enough, schools decided to deduct 20 percent of salaries of teachers, which again wasn’t a favourable step particularly in the middle of a pandemic.
Life is not easy for a working lady in this society as nobody considers them as the breadwinners; they also have the liability of looking after the house. With this new online teaching concept the charm of weekends was also taken away from us. There were times when I would fall asleep during an online meeting, after turning off my mic because I couldn’t get enough sleep during the night.
The concept of a ‘private space’ and ‘me time’ is also lost due to the current scenario and it is sad because it is a necessity for each and every woman whether she is a professional or a housewife.
The biggest obstacle was the gap between a teacher and her students. We couldn’t see their sparkling eyes, the restless moving arms and the impatient steps coming to school with the yearning to learn something new every day. Their endless banter with their friends during lectures brought life to the classrooms. In the empty corridors, we miss their fleeting steps and the impulsive laughter during breaks coming from the playgrounds. As this school session ends, we missed out on watching them grow into a smarter and better version of themselves; as the classroom is not just a place for academic learning, but also peer-learning and mastering the art of getting up after you fall down on your knees. This temporary phase has taught us that we humans are capable of adapting to every situation we have been put into and we have learned to grow with the growing technology and accept every type of change and challenge our limits.
The writer currently teaching and has an interest in literature