After schools reopened after the third wave of the Covid-19 outbreak, schools have given students the option to choose between online and offline classes. Many schools in the states have reopened their campuses for students, however, attending offline classes is not a compulsion and online classes are also being offered. However, this flexibility for students has put pressure on teachers.
Teachers in the states claim that they are overworked and stressed. They claim that they have to prepare separate notes for both online and offline mode. Simple activities like notebook checking, attendance taking and questions have been doubled as some students are attending offline and some online classes at the same time.
“As schools reopened in hybrid mode, we noticed that our teachers faced some difficulty in attending to students both online and offline in real time. For example, offline students submitted their work in hard copy, while online students uploaded their work, thus teachers were facing the problem of stress,” explains Dr Silpi Sahoo, President, SAI International Education Group .
Hybrid teaching has been a balancing act, says Aloysius D’Mello, principal of Greenwood High International School. “We have to constantly revise our lesson plans and classes to meet the needs of students who still prefer online classes and those who prefer physical classes,” he says.
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D’Mello says hybrids take longer than teachers. In particular, this becomes a challenge when teaching complex theories. “We are teaching essentially two types of classes – we have to write lessons that work for in-person instruction and those that work for online classes,” he says.
It can be challenging at times to pay equal attention to both online and offline students at the same time, says teacher Amandeep Kaur, Pacific World School. “Children who are in school want their guru’s full attention and are bubbling with energy, which was shut down for almost two years, while children whose parents still opted for online mode , they may feel that the spark of personal conversation is missing with technical glitches. Hence, ensuring optimum utilization of classroom time for creative learning outcome becomes a task at times,” says Kaur.
Reworking lesson plans to allocate activities effectively – online and offline classes can be challenging at times and require one to be creative, Moitreyi Bose, middle school, social science teacher, Akya School, BTM. “Planned resources are constant uses, such as printing worksheets and using other materials. Breaking out of the inertia of just online or offline. However, well-planned steps have helped us overcome these challenges, she says.
Teachers need well organized system, support
While most school administrations and even parents understand the pressure to deal with the strengths of an online and offline classroom simultaneously, they are not ready to shut down the flexibility the hybrid learning model offers. Many schools have started providing counseling and support to teachers.
“It is important to understand that educational models such as hybrid learning and blended learning are here to stay. The challenges of adaptation with new approaches to teaching-learning can be attributed to the lack of streamlined systems,” said Dr. Sridhar G, Founder , says initiation.
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Conducting counseling sessions for teachers by industry experts can help, says Sahu. This can help in dealing with the workload of teachers when handling both offline and online classes. “Teachers are happy to have IT exposure which has widened their learning horizons and given a new dimension to teaching and learning. It helped teachers advance their skills in curriculum implementation, policy, education systems and leadership with the support of their institutions.”
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