On June 1, the middle and high students of Sivaswami Kalalaya Senior Secondary School, Mylapore started their classes online.
A senior staff member at the school says, “When we interacted with the parents, we realised that many of them did not have multiple devices for their children to work on. Though the online classes can be accessed through phones, many children could not do it as most parents had also started working from home on a regular basis. And if the child has a sibling it only made things even more complicated for the parents. So we decided to have different timings for middle and high schoolers. Classes VI to VIII have classes for about three hours in the morning and classes IX to XII have classes in the afternoon. We will switch their timings after two weeks”.
Students of classes I to V will be getting lessons through videos for some time from this week, she says. Online classes for them will start as soon as the teachers and middle and high school students get settled in first.
She says, “We have told the students to wear uniforms but we haven’t insisted on anything yet. A few parents felt that with the maids not coming to work, washing and maintaining uniforms would only increase their workload. That being said, we have noticed that while many students do turn up in uniforms, a few of them wear other comfortable clothes and we are okay with that too for now”.
At the school, each section has about 32-37 children. Like in a regular classroom, one teacher has been assigned for one subject per section. Each session runs for about 50 minutes, with a ten minute break after each class.
She says, “We have been using Google Meet which allows the teachers to record all the lessons. They can also present any work that they would like the student to see and write down. All the students have been asked to keep their video on and to keep their audio off unless they would like to get their doubts clarified. In case the student misses the class because of power issues or for health or other reasons, we just email the video to the parents email ID.”.
The week-long schedule also has music, art and dance, value education, life skills and other co-curricular activities.
“For example, students may have a language class in the first period, a music class in the second class and then maybe social science in the third period. This keeps the student interested. We have tried as much as possible to set up the schedule just like how it would be at school”, she adds.
(()) TEACHERS, STUDENTS OF MYLAPORE; do share info on the online academics in your own local Mylapore school. Mail us your name and phone no to talk. On our FB page or at mytimesedit@gmail.com
