“It is tricky. It is troublesome,” says Geetanjali Mehta, an English teacher at Colonel’s Central Academy School in Sector 4 here, on teaching the students simultaneously in a classroom and online with a gadget on a stand close to the blackboard.
Ms. Mehta says that there were “learning gaps” despite online classes when the students returned to school after more than a year, and she noticed that “many of the students had difficulty in communicating in English” but teaching them both online and offline simultaneously was difficult. “Sometimes there are internet issues. The students online get disconnected without being noticed by the teacher. Getting feedback from the online students is also another challenge,” says Ms. Mehta.
Sitting next to her in the staff room, her colleague Shahid Qureshi, a Physics teacher, point outs that the most difficult part of the hybrid mode of teaching was to pay simultaneous attention to both sets of students – those sitting in the classroom and those attending the classes online from the comfort of their homes. “When it is either online or offline, you have one set of students to address to. But with both modes blended together, it is a bigger challenge for the teachers,” says Mr. Qureshi.
Freedom of movement
School’s vice-principal Meena Singh, adds to the discussion, saying that the new mode also “curtails the freedom of the teacher to move around”. “The teacher needs to stand in front of the stand holding the gadget and so cannot move around freely in the classroom. The teacher feels bound by the gadget,” says Ms. Singh.
Though the Haryana government has gradually opened schools from Class IV more than a month ago, with the second wave of COVID-19 ebbing, parents’ consent is mandatory for students to attend physical classes and the schools have been directed to continue with both online and offline mode of teaching.
Not feasible
Col. K. Pratap Singh, president of Haryana Progressive Schools’ Conference in Gurugram, says that the hybrid mode of teaching was not “feasible”. “The government may have directed the schools to hold both modes of classes, but it was not implementable. In our school, we have decided to conduct only physical classes for Classes IX-XII and the response is tremendous. The attendance in the classes has gradually crossed the 90% mark. We are not forcing parents to send children for physical classes and don’t mark them absent either. We will hold extra classes for them when they decide to come to school instead of holding simultaneous online classes,” says Col. Singh, also chairperson of the CCA School. The school is also scheduled to hold its term exam from September 10, but only in offline mode.
But many schools in the city, such as Heritage Xperiential Learning School, have been successfully running both modes of classes.
Manifold challenges
T he non-payment of dues remains another challenge for private schools. Col. Singh says that around 30-40% of parents across various schools in Gurugram have still not cleared their dues for the past year, “instigated” by the NGOs and activists, and in the false hope of a waive-off. He says that the schools were now within their rights to take action against the parents. He quotes Section 24 of the Haryana Education Act that allows the schools to strike off the names of the students in case the dues are not paid within ten days.
“The Haryana government, in its order on June 1 last year, had directed the schools to not strike off the names of the students in case of non-payment of dues but withdrew it a week later. The court orders, too, were to defer the fee and not waive off,” says Col. Singh.
For the government schools, however, the challenges are different, in view of the large strength of the classes and lack of technology at par with their private counterparts.
“We have 80-90 students in each section. A majority of the parents have given their consent for physical classes. So, we have divided the students in each section into two parts and called them on alternate days to maintain social distancing. Since we don’t have the technology to hold simultaneous online and offline classes, the teachers go back to their homes to teach the students online. So a teacher ends up repeating the chapter three times. It is quite a task,” says Suman Lata Sharma, principal of Government Model Senior Secondary School, Sector 4.
The online classes, says Ms. Sharma, are held mostly by sharing videos on WhatsApp groups created for each subject. She says that live online classes are rare.
“We have eight sections for each class from Classes IX-XII, and a separate WhatsApp group has been created for each subject. So, there are 40 WhatsApp groups for each class. I try to monitor that the teachers hold online classes for those students not attending school, but it is not humanly possible to daily supervise so many groups,” says Ms. Sharma.
