The Online world for Special educators

As I look back it has been an amazing year. I remember those cliché statements when someone used to share that they were just thrown into the water and had to learn to swim. Well, for me this metaphor was almost real. It was a complete 100% digital dive. New apps took centre stage. Zoom, meet, team were more a fashion to take on immediately with pride.

As I started my online sessions, I realised my students were never alone they had the golden presence of their parents. Honestly my PPTs and teaching material were getting stylised not only to keep the learning interest of my students, I was pushing my creative bar to equally engage the interest of the shadowing parents too. I realised I was mastering the art of making PPTs, and thanks to youtube and google. The TLMs were getting more interesting and engaging for my students.

Webinars and online training were just abuzz. I also got opportunity to conduct couple of online training, I suddenly became accustomed to insta and fb live. These were just so alien a few months ago to me.

TV news was constantly blaring of the increasing Covid numbers, covid deaths, pandemic scare etc etc – but it all had to be taken in a stride.

My son being a frontline worker, he was posted to care for the covid patients, those were some
emotional moments of fear as a mother for me. But I did talk to myself and looked at it as a wonderful
opportunity for my son to serve the sick and the nation in a time of extreme need. Seeing him work
tirelessly, I knew I had also to be equally giving. Well, that was the time when I got to connect with a pool of special educators and I made few learning materials for children in remote areas who had no access to digital classes. Burning the night lamp and staying up at night to produce something meaningful was simply amazing. I got to know new friends from SERPA through this.

Work from home culture helped me find time to untap few of my dormant hobbies. My soap crafting took a new shape I started enjoying soap-making, and it is so therapeutic for me.Now as we move to hybrid work culture of balancing online and offline classes. This has made me realise that everything is transient and we have to be ever evolving and we cannot resist the change. Rather be the flow to make the learning and teaching to be more engaging. A win-win situation for the student and the special educator.

This Covid era has brought parents and special educators very close. As how much we respect parents, they too have realised what it takes to teach a child with special need. Covid has brought about a lot of transparency in the program, and that is something here to stay. So, let us continue to be more transparent and ever-evolving in this journey special education. I close here with my respect and good wishes to all my fellow special educators and rehabilitation professionals.

Written By:

SUMAIYA NAAZ

sumaiya.naaz@gmail.com