Never have I ever imagined finishing my second year of teaching on virtual classrooms, set up in a corner of my room in my home. I am an English Language teacher at Budding Minds International school, teaching through a pandemic and this is my teaching journey. I was anxious about teaching remotely upon receiving information that schools will remain shut due to unprecedented circumstances, when vacation was nearly over; due to the lack of required technology and resources at my disposal.
The first week of virtual classes were the hardest week of teaching since I began my career. I had a lot of questions constantly buzzing in my mind.
‘How will my students make sense of all this?’
‘Will they show up to classes?’
‘What will I do if there were power shutdowns or network issues? What will I do when my students have technical issues?’
‘Was I doing enough?’
‘What can be improved to better support my learners?’
‘How do I create meaningful connections in my lessons?’
I still ask these questions to myself. The assistance from teacher mentors from teacher community in my school truly helped me cope and integrate technology on my lessons as much as possible. Further, sharing techniques and ideas; space provided to take creative risks and doing continuous reflections helped improve the learning experience of my learners immensely from where I started a few months ago.
When I read through my schedule, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by how much work there is to do at any given time. It consumes my day and there is always more work piling up in the corner waiting to be done. But it is this experience that pushed me as a teacher. I realised the importance of learning again, reconnecting with a part of myself. I recognize how important what I do here as a teacher is when students mention that they want to be at school learning or about missing their friends…when they appreciate what I do.
It is astounding how the pandemic has exemplified how technology can help transform how we teach and learn. I remember how we teachers were all competing with each other to explore and learn how to use educative tools in our new learning platform. This journey has enabled me to strive to provide the academic and socio-emotional support that my learners need through enriching online learning experiences; which differ vastly from my own schooling experiences. Which is why, I strongly believe and try to practice empathy-driven learning in my classrooms. It is also advocated widely in all aspects of our school culture across the BMIS community.
As I write about my journey, I am reminded of a project I did with children as part of our Student leadership program. My students wrote happy messages of hope with illustrations to essential workers in our community to acknowledge and appreciate their valuable services. Being a language teacher, I consider writing to be a powerful tool of expression to amplify one’s voice. Writing this post about my journey resonates with that concept and it was an exercise that has encouraged me to stop, think and reflect. ?
Vaishali Rajan
