When Corona knocks us down, zeal to learn keeps the flame of education alive - the Learn From Home way

The year 2020 has not been kind to anybody, let alone the children. They are the most vulnerable at the moment as yet without a voice. While everyone is concerned about their schools and loss of learning, what they are perhaps losing the most is their playtime with peers. Social connect and  emotional bonding with peers is something we naturally have around us as we grow up, and hence have never given a thought about its importance. Most life skills are learnt though these connect and bonding. The school and the classroom are the places where children build this connect and learn, not just from teachers, but from their peers.

All this learning came to a grinding halt due to the pandemic caused by COVID 19. There has been efforts world over to continue the learning through online mediums as an alternative. At a broader level, this is perhaps the only and most effective way to connect schools, their teachers and peers to the children. However if we look deeper into the rural side of India, the reality is far from this belief. With scarcely available internet network and unavailability of devices like phones and television, the reach of online learning is still limited. 

This, however is not the end of the story. It is just the beginning of several effort by various organisations to overcome all the hindrances to reach more children. And eVidyaloka is very much part of this effort. 

The initiative of the Learn From Home (LFH) model speaks in bounds about this. Though a baby step, it is nevertheless an effort to keep the flame of inquisitiveness to explore and learn alive among the rural children. The ideation of LFH emerged out of the persistent uneasiness due to the loss of connect with the children. The feeling of losing them, and hence the opportunity to nurture them for a bright future perhaps pushed us to somehow find a way to build that connect. LFH involved meticulous planning and then execution.

It all began with collection of phone numbers of the parents, whose children attended our classes before COVID 19 strike. This helped us to gauge the feasibility of rolling out the LFH model. The numbers were not reassuring, nonetheless was an avenue to connect back with a handful of them. As always, our volunteer teachers (VTs) were forthcoming in supporting us. Four to five children and the VT formed a skype group and connected for an hour for two days in a week to teach and learn. 

The pilot was done in May. The initial hick-ups in terms of  availability of phones to children, when parents would have to go for work, network issues and of course technical glitches were part of the program. What emerged though, as an outcome, was the response of the children. What started as a pilot of 2-3 such groups, now has expanded to more than 100 schools and 1000 students across 10 states where evidyaloka functions. The individual attention of the teacher, and re-opening of the windows to see out of their homes and villages perhaps worked here, over and above everything. 

Within the last couple of months doing LFH, eVidyaloka has been able to connect back with some children. While a lot more needs to be done, what has been achieved in tough circumstances definitely feels like a pat on our backs.

We have our volunteer teachers (VTs) now vetting for this medium of teaching. This is certainly reassuring for us, as they are the ones facing all challenges while connecting to their students through phones, more than anyone else. And yet, they show continuous zeal and eagerness to enable the teaching-learning. To keep the children hooked on to the classes, each of them strived to come up with creative ideas. While some tried to "Make class more interesting by playing games related to language with choices of answers and run English story videos to improve listening ability.", another VT "tried to relate on a human level, to make them feel at ease and understand that they were lucky to get a chance to learn via the phone.". 

We had another VT who tried to retain the child's interest by conducting an activity where "One child enjoyed art work so I gave her art related projects for Math. The other child is very interested in music so I would tell her to make songs for Math vocabulary to learn.". And what kept the VTs' spirits up was the feeling that their students responded well to the classes. The students would "send the HW on WhatsApp in 10 minutes, once the class was over. They r also intelligent& hard working. With a right & proper guidance , these students will come up with flying colours. I am really satisfied teaching them."

While urban schools are struggling to engage the children through online session, the engagement techniques of the VTs are worth emulating. 

VT Manju Sengupta, teaching in West bengal school involved the children meaningfully. She says

"I created a session around the children’s aspiration and dreams and how they want to see themselves in the future. This has turned out to be an extremely popular one where I tell stories of famous personalities to inspire them to be whatever they aspire to be like a doctor (Kadambini), cricketer (Saurav Ganguly), politician (Mamata Banerjee), police officer (Rajeev Kumar). filmstar (Prasenjit). dancer, singer, etc. all from Bengal to keep a real-life connect."

Sangeeta Hatangadi, a VT shared her classroom activity. 

"We would  start the class with the discussion of applications of Math in daily life.We did a project where the children designed a playground with the objective to learn how to measure using different units of measurements and calculate the perimeter. The children enjoyed this project and they especially enjoyed the art aspect of it. It also made concepts more relatable. They also made fraction peacock art work where they learnt what the 'whole' means when we talk about fractions.We also made three dimension boxes from a sheet of paper, a boat that floats on water, a cone from a circle.The children used chart papers which they had at home and colour pencils."

Swapna Rawat, teaching in a school in Uttarakhand tries to strike a conversation with the students on her first class by sharing her story. This just got the attention of all the children.

We have some other VTs who tried to keep the pace of learning steady, to make sure that the children don't forget the lessons already learnt.   

All these and much much more has been happening inside each Skype and Watsapp groups, that have become a virtual classroom for evidyaloka VTs and students alike. With efforts to widen the reach through television telecast of VT recorded sessions, audio sessions through normal phones, and such other pilots, eVidyaloka's strive to get more children to continue learning continues. 

If change brings on such revelation, we feel a little more ease in accepting it. In times when everything seems uncertain, and all plans are falling flat, the mere outcome of the LFH is like a distant light, slowly getting brighter everyday. It has indeed become our avenue to not just reach out to the children, but also make their parents and the communities aware of the importance of education. While at it, eVidyaloka will continue to evolve the ways of implementing the LFH programe to encompass the largest number of children possible, and make this small step a stepping stone to bigger change.