EVERY COIN HAVE TWO SIDES

Parents must nurture the family fonds by discussing, guiding, absorbing them in household chores, setting examples and they need to do all of these with a lot of patience and love

Charu Krishna Tailang

During the global pandemic, children are also one of the prime sufferers, since the most-awaited, summer vacations had started and they aren’t able to take advantage of these holidays.

A parent and teacher share a greater responsibility coz child naturally imbibe and emulate by observing them.

The parents and teachers must try to encash this lockdown opportunity by engaging the students into challenges and creative activities such as drawing, painting, creating best out of waste; whichever they find more interesting. Students must prepare their daily schedule and try to follow it, which will help them learn discipline in life.

This is also the best time where the students can be asked to read a variety of books (i.e., picture storybooks, participation books, wordless books, folktale & fables, information books, books on discoveries) and newspapers, to inculcate reading habit which will also help them to increase their level of understanding and let them know different perspectives.

The current scenario is also the best time to make the students realize the importance of good health behaviour and hygiene.

Encourage them to form a habit of washing their hands frequently at least for about 20 seconds and covering while coughs and sneezes.

Help the children to understand the elementary notions of disease prevention and control. Most important of all is limit the screen timing.

Parents must nurture the family fonds by discussing, guiding, absorbing them in household chores, setting examples and they need to do all of these with a lot of patience and love.

Students need to be taught tolerance, especially religious tolerance.

For enhancing religious tolerance, students should be assigned a task of selecting one religion and expressing their views and opinions based on what they discovered while studying that particular religion.

While giving this kind of homework special care need to be taken in terms of the resources that the students will be using.

Rewards will act as the driving force to retain the students’ interest and attention while performing the above-mentioned task.

When I was indulged in this analysis – synthesis and lost selfless in thought process of making role of a Teacher – parent to utilize this quarantine period which is very hostile and depressive especially for our children when we have to keep them psycho-socially self- responsible and healthy at this time with morally high quality of life.

Suddenly I alerted by a phone call made by my student Ms Afsha Siddique who is also a teacher and research scholar in social sciences. She asked me what I am planning to do in this quarantine period for education of our children when everybody is untouchable and isolated in this already self-confined and self-centric human society due to social-distancing norms under lockdown.

I told her what can we do in this period when everybody is under seize and not in the communication, although new session is going to open his mouth on 1st April.

She suggested that we can start online classes and tutorials for our children. In our school there are so many underprivileged children as a costumer base of my class.

So, this idea seems very impractical for my teaching-learning process but in long discussions of above referred situations she insisted to execute this idea through social networking platform such as WhatsApp.

There are so many educational websites and web-applications with audio-visual materials in public domains which may be blessings for our children in this period of crisis but most of the smartphones in hands of Indians are overcrowded by worthless information as social media content.

As a teacher I thought that the education with good purpose and fruitful knowledge may occupy this space in parents mobile phones and by this way they will involve in teaching-learning process at home, instead of discussing endless political debates, hatred mis- informations and fake-news.

Year ending parents-teacher meeting held on 9th March, made very useful for me to create a WhatsApp group in which since 29th March, a historical day of Indian mutiny of 1857, I started to share the content of textbooks of standard III to VIII, their explanation, worksheets and question-answers through massaging app which are responded quickly by students and their parents with greater energy and enthusiasm.

Although this digital edition can’t be replacement of student-teacher interaction in classroom which is a devine relation of affection and bonding with happiness but this may be a way of productive utilization of this quarantine period which can be misused by some pseudo-intellects and political leaders to corrupt our young minds.

Before sometime I was not in favour of the use of social media apps because of it’s misuse and abuse but now I am convinced with this phrase that every coin have two sides, just we have to see better one.

Charu Krishna Tailang, TGT, Central railway school, Kalyan