When we first heard about the Coronavirus, in February 2020, no one could have estimated how it would change our lives, or how we would have to come up with new methods of doing everyday tasks – like working, cooking, cleaning, and for us students, studying and attending classes.
On a normal school day, I would have to wake up really early to get ready to board the school bus. After reaching school, the first event of the day was the school assembly, where we did a few exercises, prayed while the choir sang a prayer, and talked with our friends. Then, we would have our classes, a short break, some more classes, a long break, and then even more classes. Then we would head home, and after a break, study or do homework.
To us it had become a routine – sometimes boring, often fun. We would look forward to inter-house competitions or a guest speaker giving a talk, or P.E period or after school activities, sometimes even a fun class activity, or some event to prepare for, like the annual day or student elections. Every three months or so, came the Unit Tests or Term End Exams. As ninth graders, we had just finished our Board Exams at the end of February and started tenth grade.
On March 13, 2020, our school and every other had been shut down because the cases of COVID-19 patients were on the rise in India. My school friends and I were ecstatic. It was the second of the four weeks of the tenth grade that were supposed to go on before our summer break, and a few of my friends had their exams going on, which were now completely canceled! We thought we were very lucky to get two whole weeks of extra vacation. No more homework, or studying, or routine – we had the freedom to play all day long! Little did we know that the invisible enemy, Corona would even take that freedom away from us, because then came the lockdown.
Much to our dismay, during the lockdown, classes restarted in the first week of April in a whole new way – online. Online classes were a new experience for us. I liked the idea of online classes because it saved us a lot of travel time, we could interact with the teacher in the same way, as we used to before the lockdown and it was not very complicated, but the only thing I did not like as much, was the fact that we could not talk to our friends in person, as we could when things were normal. Three weeks of classes later, we had our summer break which was filled with fun, some studying, and some homework, and lasted for about a month and a half.
When school restarted, we had many more classes, new teachers, and a completely new online student-teacher interaction platform, called Schoology. We could see that the teachers had really put in a lot of effort into making online school feel like normal school to us. There were fitness sessions in place of P.E periods, guest speakers who come online every week to inspire us, after-school activities with other campuses of Ekya, student clubs as we used to have every Saturday (back when things were normal), an efficient assignment and homework submission system, an online school library that I really love, online class-wise competitions, weekly discussions on various topics, and even an online badge awarding system that students got when they accomplished something. We even have a Lunch Club every week where all students of the class meet up and play games, or talk, while the class teacher facilitates the discussions and games; and morning meetings where we talk about things that inspire us, and we also listen to soothing music, that acts as an alternative for the prayer in the morning assembly that we used to have during regular school times.
I certainly do miss interacting with my schoolmates and teachers in a physical space, but I think that online classes are the best solution during these times, when we are not even allowed to step out of our houses. Online classes have successfully kept us mentally engaged and socially connected with our teachers and classmates, giving us a sense of normalcy in abnormal times. I think our teachers have helped us very much throughout this transition from normal to online school. All their efforts have helped us feel as if we are in school, leaving no aspect of real school uncovered.
By Urja Srivastava,
Grade 10A, Ekya JP Nagar
Leave a reply