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As I woke up from my afternoon nap yesterday, I was happy to see my parents heartily enjoying a digital soirée with their friends from college. They were seeing one another for the first time after more than 30-odd years. That is what you call a reunion, in the truest sense of the term, I guess. As we bemoan the lockdown and being locked within our screens, our parents seem to have discovered for themselves, something they couldn’t fathom until recently, by any stretch of the imagination. Being able to see their loved ones whilst sitting in the comfort of their home is something completely new for them, and nowadays I see them more often than not, enjoying themselves whilst indulging in it. However, such wasn’t the case right off the bat.
Even though the lockdown seemingly tried to bring life to a standstill, life did not stop. As schools and universities shut down to enable the pandemic-induced lockdown, concerns regarding students’ education began surfacing. To this end, the only ones to not relent to the difficulties posed by the ‘new normal’ were our beloved teachers. Teachers around the country, despite their unequal levels of exposure to digital communication, took the initiative of upgrading their technical skills (mostly with the help of their children), got their whiteboards out, and adapted their classes to the digital reality despite it being a painstaking process, to ensure that learning never stops.
My mother, who has been teaching kids in a renowned school in our city for the last 25 years (which is almost half her life), was suddenly overwhelmed when she learnt that she had to conduct a classroom lecture on a Zoom call with about 50-60 students. I still remember the day before she was supposed to teach her first online class. She was jittery and seemed kind of nervous about the ordeal (if I may call it!) that awaited her in the next 24 hours. She had spent a week learning how to send an invitation on Google Meet, how to place the camera in a way so as to be able to conduct the lecture smoothly, and proof checking the audibility of her video – all this while vying for a place to set up a whiteboard which she could use while teaching.
My mother’s dedicated effort towards ensuring that her students got the best out of their times made me rethink my own role in a world that has changed too much too soon. The fact that she is a quinquagenarian (someone in her 50s), who might almost be nearing the end of her professional career, is something that is of paramount importance here. When you are a 20-something just starting out in life, it is so much easier to learn and re-learn and make sense of both your failures and successes simultaneously. Being able to take both the good and the bad in your stride comes easy when there is no precedent to your work. However, when you have more than 25 years of experience behind you, it becomes a tad bit difficult to do the same. When my mother was ultimately able to set up a call and conduct a class smoothly for the first time, the glimmer in her eyes reflected confidence and contentment. Later in the day, I remember her telling me that it was quite easy, and she wondered why she had found it so complicated the first time around. Today, on 05 September, almost six months into the lockdown, she conducts all her classes ten minutes apart regularly, and at times, even uploads small clips of videos for her students on YouTube (something I haven’t even learnt yet!).
Early every morning, she wakes up to sift through her lesson plan, figuring out the best way to present them on screen. The exercise has entailed a thorough reworking of the ways in which she had taught her students before. Things have become easier for her in the last one month, but she is still figuring out newer ways and means of re-engaging her students into a new approach of acquiring knowledge, which is somewhat an ordeal when you have inattentive 16-year-olds being compelled to sit glued to their screens for hours at a time. There were days when it was difficult for her to manage a class, which always seemed on the brink of breaking out into commotion, at the slightest intimation.
A male colleague of hers, someone she has always admired, recently succumbed to a nervous breakdown on being at the receiving end of a slew of abuses as he struggled with trying out something new for the first time in his life.
On the other hand, Susmita Mukherjee, who is a friend of my mother’s colleague and a senior teacher at St. Paul’s school in Kolkata, feels that online classes have made students more attentive due to them being unable to indulge in gossip with their peers during class hours, or whiling away their time when the teacher is not present in class. Essentially, she believes that it has made it easier for them to pay attention to and grapple with complicated concepts in a more efficient way.
Having said that, one cannot deny that negotiating with technology has indeed been tough for a generation that has had little to no contact with it for the major part of their lives.
Growing up in an era without technology has made them ill-equipped to deal with a world that cannot see beyond it. As life moves on from the COVID to the post-COVID age, it is, therefore, our responsibility to extend them a helping hand, and be willing to stand beside them in their struggles, as they did in ours. This Teachers’ Day, let us all strive to do our bit in helping our elderly teachers and parents through these trying times, and extend a warm sense of gratitude to these unsung heroes who have nurtured us and taught us throughout our lives.
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