Parita Shah: Pehlay Akshar
Do we all remember what the previous normal looked like? Do we all miss it?
Like any other day, in mid-March 2020 a few of our team members stepped into classrooms full of students helping them learn language in fun and engaging ways. A few team members were supporting teachers in self-help groups modeling problem solving. I remember being busy with some government officials explaining the impact that we had made on 500 teachers and how we are planning to scale this program. All this was a part of our normal.
And amid this, we suddenly received an email alert that asked us to move to our homes immediately. That day it gave me great pride to be a part of an organization that practices what it preaches. Because we keep telling our teachers the importance of students feeling safe to be able to learn better, similarly it was important for us to feel safe and at peace to be able to think critically on how to fight the pandemic. When we realized how long this would go on for, we knew there would be challenges ahead.
We could not let the pandemic stop the learning process for our students. The premise of safe space held our team together and made us very agile and innovative. We conducted our pilot online learning project by creating a WhatsApp group of our students where we sent theme-based, recorded videos with assignments and activities.
The overwhelming response of our students got us to thinking of how could we increase their exposure to learning? And what better way of learning than through stories? This led us to initiate a campaign requesting volunteers to record a video of them narrating a storybook. We used the communication channel of our teachers to ensure every student had a story per day to listen to.
Along with the joy of reaching out to hundreds of students, there was the severe anguish of not being able to reach out to the other lakhs of students who were still being left out. We knew that to reach them we had to reach out to the most valuable asset in the education system: our teachers! We started sharing all our learnings and ideas with 3000 BMC teachers.
I’ll never forget what one teacher said to me.
“Ma’am main pichhle 4 mahinon se mere bacchon se connect karne ki koshish kar rahi ho aur mujhe bahut bura bhi lag raha tha kyunki unki itni padhaai mis ho rahi hai. per thank you so much mam ki aapane naahi zoom ki training bhi lekin uske sath sath Apne sare lesson plans banaa kar diye hai Jo hamen sirf bacchon ke sath lene hain aur aaj jab vah bacche mere sath online milane aate Hain mujhe bahut Khushi hoti hai.”
Do I miss my normal? No. I actually don’t. Does my team miss their normal? No. They don’t either. It gives me immense pleasure to say that we have recreated our normal. Not only is it different now, it just might be even better.