Effective Principals 2020 | Dr. Ritu Chauhan, Principal of Manipal International School

Covid-19 lockdown: How the pandemic bringing change in Indian education system?

The moment we realize that Covid 19 pandemic is not going to go away so soon, school management has decided to shift overnight on digital classrooms.

All understood by now that this is unavoidable and we need to continue our Teaching Learning journey keeping in mind current Covid situation.

School management is finding it difficult to run the show without fee payment by parents and government rules and regulations. School staff is under tremendous pressure to continue the learning of their  students.

Students are trying to cope physically as well as emotionally with these sudden changes in their schooling.

Parents are not willing to send their kids to schools till COVIDexists. Teachers are becoming more tech savvy to give best experience to their students.

Burning mid night oil to prepare online content and working on digital tools, teachers are no lesser than any other warrior. Management is supporting their teachers in this tough time.

Parents are involved more as they need to guide their young ones at home. For social, physical and emotional well being of children, parents’ support is extremely important.

Many schools have started helpline numbers and counselling sessions. POST COVID – 8S FOR SCHOOLS As rightly said by Joshua Marine, “Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.

” We as educators, need to check and evaluate post covid benefits for our students and our new norm for schools.

Let me explain my 8S Model to show what positive changes this current situation will bring in education sector.

1. Scaffolding in education- It is a technique in which we give progressive steps to the students to move towards higher understanding and independent thinking in learning process. Today, in absence of face to face interaction, through technology in education, we are giving the opportunity to our students to make their own study schedule. Post Covid, our students will use current experiences and become critical thinkers and problem solvers.

2. Skill development- Student community is struggling and trying to adjust with virtual classrooms and online sessions, however, these difficulties of today’s time, will help them to develop their skills and they will be ready to face future challenges.

3. Scientific enquiry- Currently we are giving them opportunities to explore and do the enquiry themselves at their home without much teacher assistance. In future, this will help them to develop research attitude and it will help them to infer, predict, measure, evaluate, question, interpret and analyze data.

4. Socratic questioning- It relies on disciplined dialogue and thoughtful questions intended to support students to validate their ideas. Through online mode, at present, this is possible, and it will surely help students in future to adopt the inquiry methodology with logical reasoning. Post Covid, it will become an integral part of our teaching learning process.

5. Student empowerment- Always our classrooms are driven by teachers. Nowadays we claim to be student centric but not in its true sense. In this Covid situation, the onus is on students. We are indirectly empowering them to take their own decisions and implement the changes at home to continue their studies.

6. Sustainability- We are evolving as a community during these difficult times. We all are trying our best to sustain our educational goals and learning outcomes. In future, post Covid, it’s surely going to motivate us to face any unprecedented changes.

7. Synchronous learning- Leaving all our inhibitions, we as educators adopted synchronous learning. It means students learn through online tools and exchange their ideas and thoughts live. In this, learning happens at the same time but not necessary at the same place.

8. Student centered learning- Finally, this hard time will make it possible in real sense. It gives more autonomy to the students in their educational journey. In the current situation, students will plan, implement, and assess themselves and they will voice out what, why, where, when and how they are learning the concepts. Post Covid, they will become responsible and independent in their studies.

Let us try our best to continue students Learning keeping all safety measures in mind and let us try to focus on positive factors and new ways of sustaining education which in future will make our education system so strong that we as a community will be able to face any pandemic or disaster.

Effective Principals 2020 | Dr. Ritu Chauhan, Principal of Manipal International School

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