KOLKATA: At a time when online classes seem to be the only teaching-learning option, be it for school, college or university, St Augustine’s Day School, Shyamnagar, has taken classrooms to students’ homes. Teachers of pre-primary, primary and middle school have been visiting the children’s homes to teach them in small groups.
An elaborate routine has been drawn up, dividing a class into groups of five to seven children living in the same locality. Every group is asked to get together at the home of one of the kids and the routine is such that every house has to host “the physical classes” at least twice a month. For the pre-primary to middle section at St Augustine’s, online classes have not been done away with but they are being interspersed with physical classes for as many days as possible. School CEO Amitava Chowdhury has christened the initiative, Boost—Bridging Online-Offline Study Time.
“Lack of real interaction among themselves and teachers was causing the kids a lot of harm. We noticed in our youngest kids a gap in the development of social skills and hence, this decision of taking the school home. We are trying to address 1,350 kids this way. Though we are unable to replace the online classes completely, we are minimising its negative influence,” said Rodney Borneo, principal of the school.
The school has been able to go for this unique arrangement with the consent of both parents and teachers. Now that some of the “home classes” have been held, both sides seem to be happy. The children are ecstatic, not only because it is a refreshing break from the monotony of staring at laptops or mobiles for hours with the teacher being just a “vision” on the other side, rattling out lessons, but also because they can be with other children.
For many of the kids in the pre-primary and primary sections, this is their first experience of “a real school”. Many had taken admission only to find themselves in online classrooms. The kids, till now, had no idea what it felt like to attend classes with other children, to sit across a teacher, listen and follow her instructions and work under her supervision, and not that of their parents.
The teacher does not visit alone. She is accompanied by a staff member, who first sanitizes the “classroom” and arranges for distanced seating, before lessons begin. The white board and pens and Montessori tools are taken to the home that hosts a teacher on a given day. The classes were being held in the presence of parents as making the kids sit at a distance and making them keep their masks on could be a major hurdle for children that young, the school said. “All teachers and staff visiting students’ homes have received two doses of the vaccine. So are the parents who are hosting and supervising the classes,” said Antara Chatterjee, headmistress of the pre-primary and primary sections. “The classes are a hit and others are calling up to confirm their turns,” said Sritama Mukherjee, co-ordinator of the pre-primary section.
