The world is facing a pandemic that is making everyone take drastic measures to change their lifestyles and adjust to the current situation.
I recently joined Ishanya India Foundation and was introduced to a new mode of teaching – virtual classes. This medium of learning, interacting and teaching was not just new for me but for the students too which made it even more challenging.
The sudden shift in this teaching method called for detailed replanning and preparation from all special educators. We needed to come up with ideas and creative materials to make sure that each student enjoys and learns. Ishanya adapted their curriculum in such a way that it optimises the effectiveness of learning and teaching so that the children, parents and educators overcome the challenges of ‘The new normal’. With immense support and guidance from my colleagues I was able to get on track and keep up with this new system. I was happy to see that with every passing day, the students were getting comfortable with me even though there was no direct contact.
Although I was happy that I was able to manage the challenges of building rapport with the students virtually, every day posed a challenge in the form of planning and preparing for the next session. Each session had to be planned in such a way that we could capture their attention, improve their learning and keep them engaged throughout the sessions. The challenge was – bringing the fun and learning together in a virtual session to make up for the lack of sessions. It is only natural for the students to miss their friends, teachers and all the fun activities they had at the center so it was up to us to make sure that the students could enjoy these virtual sessions as much as they enjoyed their sessions at the center.
Today, with great pleasure I can say that we help each other out everyday in facing all these challenges together after all our students are our best teachers!
I am grateful to Ishanya India Foundation for providing me with this opportunity to develop myself as an educator and be a part of an amazing team.
– Aysha
