As an educator being on the front line is not an easy task and for those of us who risk our lives on a daily basis to deal with children coming from different homes it is a task. We have been going back out into the classrooms and things are definitely not the way it was and it will never be. Parents must now be aware that they have a major responsibility to the teachers and to their children. Their responsibility entails them educating their children about the protocols that will not just safeguard their children but other children around them and teachers who also have their families.
There was a time when it was okay for teachers to embrace or give a high five to children to show them that love and affection that is usually lacking at home but it is now not in the best interest of the teacher to do so . Any affection would have to be verbally exercised. It is therefore impressed on parents to start spending more time with their children so that the problem of affection and love can be dealt with. Our children need to be emotionally stable now because a simple hug can be a death sentence. This is a harsh reality but it is true.
It is not okay to lend or to borrow things in the classroom as now this could cause an infection unknowingly. This was not so just a few months ago and so it is not easy to change this culture. There is still no cure for this disease and so we all need to be careful. Covid 19 can and will influence selfishness if it is allowed to because it decreases interaction as it should and it also perpetuates social distancing. This is Covid 19 in the classroom.
We must remind those who are concerned just like all the other frontline workers teachers are also mothers and fathers and they take on the problems like mothers and fathers of the children who they come in contact with. Teachers get emotionally attached to students and so efforts must be put in place to safe guard teachers from undue emotional stress. Have you ever stop to imagine what it’s like when a teacher is told that one of his or her student is sick especially when they are really sick. Many are not aware but sometimes tears are shed for students and their situations. Can you imagine a child being lost to this Covid 19 disease? Do you have any idea what those teachers have to deal with? Do you know what it is like dealing with a child who has lost his or her parent to this disease in a class?
Marking books have now turned mostly to marking online and this again has to do with the possibility of contracting the virus from the notebooks that the students use. Work is now being marked online and so students will have to use their devices .It means parents should have already started to put aside finances to buy notebooks, phones, laptops and all the other devices which has now become a part of the students learning tools. These will all have to be updated as well so all of this has to be taken into consideration as we move forward.
Play time especially for the smaller children or even break time has to be carefully monitored as these students sometimes are not even aware of their own danger. The fact that they are social beings make it very hard for them not to want to interact so of course you will have the rebellious ones and this has to be dealt with giving students more reason to be annoyed or even become frustrated with the system.
School as we know it is no longer the same and with the fact that the Covid 19 strain is one that continues to change it means that we now have to deal with a ‘new normal’. Let us continue to pray for all our frontline workers as we struggle through this pandemic and let us continue to work with our teachers as they find new ways to reach the students who need the education to face this new world.