STRENGTH COMES FROM STRUGGLE. WHEN YOU LEARN TO SEE YOUR STRUGGLES AS OPPORTUNITIES
Garima Pandey, Principal
Central Academy International School,
Sector 10 Dwarka
STRENGTH COMES FROM STRUGGLE. WHEN YOU LEARN TO SEE YOUR STRUGGLES AS OPPORTUNITIES TO BECOME STRONGER, BETTER, WISER, THEN YOU’RE THINKING SHIFTS FROM ‘I CAN’T DO THIS’ TO ‘I MUST DO THIS.
Good morning to everyone hearing me out today. Hope you are all safe and staying safely at home as good citizens of the nation. I would like to introduce myself to you all. I’m Ms. Garima Pandey; Principal of Central Academy International School, Sector 10 Dwarka. Our school begun its official session in the year 2018 and we have had two glorious sessions in the past. We as an institution believe every child is unique and cater to individual learning abilities by adopting different teaching methodologies for our classes.
In these unfortunate times, with the onset of COVID-19 as a pandemic, the worst hit are our younger generation. They have been kept cooped up in the house; they can’t meet their friends, they can’t start their new sessions at school. At such a time, the educational institutions across the nation took up the onus of starting online classes or e-learning. This initiative not only has kept students constructively energized, but has also helped in maintaining a schedule for our kids.
We at CAIS, Dwarka, began this journey of e-learning since 30th March, 2020. We have received positive feedback and responses from our parents to this endeavour of ours. The initial week e-learning was conducted by subject teachers preparing and sending voice-enabled PPTs, PDFs and by sending content related videos to the students through WhatsApp. From the second week onwards, classes 6-9 started with live classes through Zoom App and I assure you our teachers are following all guidelines issued by the government for the use of Zoom App. Our faculty has left no stone unturned in preparing and providing the best and most understandable e-learning content. It’s not just about downloading videos from the net and sending it to the students; they prepare PPTs, carefully covering each topic through the slides and if that’s not enough, they put in audio recordings of the topic explained in their own voices. We all are aware that students understand their own teachers best and are used to their methodologies, so for this purpose, my faculty has gone that extra edge. They prepare assignments which enable the students to understand the concepts more clearly and also give online tests to help assess their understanding of the same.
Our online teaching takes place between 10 am to 12 noon. We don’t want to overburden our students and pressurize parents in these already difficult times, hence we have only 3 classes in a day; 2 primary subjects and one activity class for Classes 6-9. For our younger students we have just one primary subject and one activity class per day. For the younger students the subject teacher is online from 10 – 12 to answer any queries they have. Our students are also encouraged to keep themselves fit and active by following exercise and yoga routines from 8.30 to 9 in the morning
Teaching in a classroom is definitely a better option but when that option isn’t available we need to turn to alternate resources. The only issue especially for classes 6-9 is of connectivity, due to high internet usage at this time, sometimes the bandwidth gets low and disturbs the connection, but these minor disturbances are no match for our enthusiastic students and teachers; who pursue and get the class going soon.
WE GROW BECAUSE WE STRUGGLE, WE LEARN AND OVERCOME.
In this time of struggle, we are all learning; learning to cope with our situation, learning to be responsible citizens, learning to bring out our best talents in these times. This learning is what will eventually help us all overcome the current scenario. God Bless you all! Stay Home & Stay Safe!
