Jawaid Iqbal
In December 2019,the outbreak of COVID-19 panicked the majority of populations across the world . As we all are aware about the fact that it emerged from Wuhan,China and at a very fast speed it reached to almost every part of the world. Though people had heard about many infections and viruses in the past but in December 2019,we all were panicked by the outbreak of novel coronavirus. The whole world had never faced situations as drastically as it faced after the breakout of COVID-19. The situation forced the governments of almost all the countries of the world to enforce a general lock down in an attempt to prevent the spread of the infection of this virus. In India also, the lockdown was imposed and inevitably educational institutions were also shut.All the religious activities including the holy prayers of muslims and prayer meeting of the people of other faiths were restricted .The markets, shops, parks and other tourist places were also shut . However, these all steps were taken for breaking the spread of noval corona virus.All public activities in India including Jammu & Kashmir were put on suspension mode at the fag end of the March this year and worst hit was the education sector. Students in our J&K couldn’t attend schools and colleges. In other parts of the country, students avail 4 G internet facility and attend online classes but unfortunately in our the students in Jammu & Kashmir have been deprived of high speed 4 G internet facility. With low speed internet facility it iss very difficult to surf or browse any website and one can easily imagine how could a student download a 2mb assignment or a pdf file.
Various government agencies must cooperate and help teachers in their mission of teaching .Instead of issuing orders to stop the community classes; teachers must be encouraged to continue this process as is going on in our zone.
In Zone Mawar, using the slow speed of internet, the teachers are currently holding community classes to students in addition to online, offline and voice interactions. The LMS portal is being widely used as well. There are more or less 119 schools in which 614 teachers are working days and night and so far more than 3522 videos,877 e-contents,652 assignments have been uploaded on LMS. All the Higher secondary schools and High schools are giving their best and at the end of the day, we see teachers conducting more than 200 classes from 12 higher secondary and High schools in total. In addition to these classes, all the primary and upper primary schools of our zone are delivering more than 1000 classes per day in the form of community, voice, offline and online classes. This hard work of teachers of zone mawar is only and only because of the team spirit of teachers of zone Mawar who are always guided by the zonal resourceful persons. It is worth mentioning here that ZEO Mawar has always remained active in keeping his educational zone engaged with the online and offline classes in the district. The resource persons and other officials are always on toes in resolving the issues .However, community classes are disturbed as the fatal noval corona virus is now spreading fast. It is our moral duty to take care of our teaching-learning process and not to let the situation slip out of our hands. Various government agencies must cooperate and help teachers in their mission of teaching .Instead of issuing orders to stop the community classes; teachers must be encouraged to continue this process as is going on in our zone. There is nothing wrong in fallowing SOPs’, wearing masks and maintaining social distance. If these SOPs’ are followed, we teachers Insha Allah would surely win the war of educational management very soon.
(The author is a teacher in J&K School Education Department. Views are his own)
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