Dealing with the grief and trauma of lecturers and college students as a consequence of Covid is among the many high priorities earlier than colleges reopen within the capital, a number of directors have mentioned.
Teaching-learning actions in colleges have been on a halt since April, when an early summer time trip was declared. Since then, with the lethal second wave of Covid hitting town, authorities college lecturers had been virtually solely diverted to Covid-related duties — at vaccination centres, airports, ration distribution centres, dispensaries and oxygen centres.
“In our school, we lost a former colleague; a teacher lost both her parents; another was struggling with treatment for her father. Teachers have a lot of work right now. They have duties at school vaccination centres; admissions are ongoing; exam results are being prepared; and now we are going to start the new academic year. Teachers began returning to school with 50% capacity earlier this month, and before that we held a few informal meetings just to talk. We ask about everyone’s well-being, so that we can do our best to be accommodating and flexible. A few teachers are pregnant, and we have asked them not to report physically to school,” mentioned the vice-principal of a college.
At the identical college, they’ve recognized 9 youngsters who’ve misplaced their mother and father to Covid. Teachers are counselling them.
Starting Monday, these colleges had been to start tracing and getting again in contact with their college students. In the subsequent 4 weeks, they’re to counsel and revisit foundational learnings of their college students. Teachers are, in the meantime, being ready with periods to course of their grief.
An schooling division round introducing ‘well-being conversations’ amongst lecturers learn: “Under these circumstances, it is possible that our teachers and students too have faced deep trauma. It is necessary that teachers and students are given time to share their grief and pain, and reconnect with each other before moving on to doing regular work… Our teachers must start reconnecting with their students as soon as possible. Before that, they need to be prepared to not just overcome their own grief and stress due to very difficult last few months, but also be emotionally ready to support students in similar circumstances. Hence, it is important that teachers are supported and enabled to prepare themselves to counsel their students, support them if they are facing any challenge, and help them to come to a stage where they are ready to resume teaching-learning activities.”
The SCERT has engaged counsellors from ‘Children First’ to work with mentor lecturers “to help them process their emotions and provide a space for engaging with their peers”.
These mentor lecturers, who’re assigned to a set of colleges, will conduct comparable workshops with trainer improvement coordinators and ‘happiness curriculum’ coordinators in colleges, who will in flip conduct periods with all lecturers there.
At the identical time, colleges are discovering their very own methods of serving to college students. “Through conversations with our students, we have found that 10 sets of siblings — 22 students — have lost their fathers in the second wave. The brother of our vice-principal has been giving them Rs 5,000 per month since May and has said he’ll continue for two years. We have also sensitised our teachers on how to speak to students on the phone, asking them how they are and consoling them,” mentioned Awadhesh Jha, head of a authorities college in Rohini.