Naveen Kumar
Hyderabad: While schools and colleges are contemplating either going full fledged online or starting an alternative attendance method, we take a look at the other side of problems faced by both parents and faculties while going digital. From facing problems with arranging gadgets, to monitoring children’s activities and facing bullying over calls by teachers, there are a variety of problems to look at during the era of the Covid pandemic.
While in general, the teachers in private schools primarily complain about online bullying by students during video calls, their government counterparts claim the biggest challenge is reaching students who belong to the economically weaker section.
“One of the biggest issues that female teachers face is online bullying, especially from older children. Students create Zoom IDs in random, unidentifiable names and troll teachers. Some switch off their camera and call teachers names from these IDs, some use them to send memes to teachers,” said Chandana Surapaneni, who teaches for a school and has been conducting online classes through the video-conferencing app Zoom. “Since there is no way of finding out who the student is during the Zoom call, we have to ignore all the bullying and concentrate on teaching,” she added.
Apart from bullying it’s the interference of family members during the online classes which is causing trouble. “With the young students, the attention span is very short. It’s very difficult to make them sit through classes. Since parents have to sit with young children, I have faced situations where parents, grandparents are talking in the background, going about their daily chores,” shared a faculty from Hyderabad on the basis of anonymity.
Speaking about the health concerns, parents share their plight by complaining about their kids spending too much screen time. The ministry of human resource development (MHRD) recommended just 30 hours of screen time for pre-primary students, two classes of 45 minutes each for classes 1 to 8 and four classes of 45 minutes each for classes 9 to 12, but that’s not working, parents allege. Many schools are not following the directions, which anyway are not binding.
Classes go on for longer than expected. “My children recently developed fever and headaches after attending online classes and I had to take them to the doctor,” says Steve Gandham, a working parent from Secunderabad.
Some parents are reporting mental health issues too due to excessive use of gadgets. Ravi Pulakesi shares that his children have increased mood swings now. “They are already cooped up at home and are getting cranky and restless. After their online classes I find they are unable to focus on their work and suffer from headaches,” he says.
Listing other concerns with online lessons, teaching faculties mentioned bullying, children who sleep off during classes, and argumentative parents. “I have faced incidents where students sleep off during class, switch off their camera and audio. Teachers think they are attending the class, because the status shows online, but, in reality, they have gone off to sleep,” said a teacher.
Speaking about possible ways to operate a school, the Vice Principal of Hyderabad Public School, Narsimha Reddy Sallaram said that multiple proposals are coming in as to how to start school once lockdown is lifted. “There is a possibility of rotational shifts where we ask 50 percent of students to come to school for a week and attend while the remaining 50 percent can attend online classes. We have to consider other factors as well because it has been established that Covid19 is here to stay and we must live with it. The most affected lot will be the primary students as they will miss out on basic socialising etiquette like team work, sports and other workshops,” he said.
There is no decision about schools reopening with the Covid-19 pandemic in India even as other nations are getting students back to class despite lingering questions among parents. With the social-distancing regulations eating into much of the new academic year, online classes have emerged as an important mode to continue lessons, but they have been dogged by questions since they first began earlier this year.
