Ever since covid-19 pandemic broke out, many rules of games changed in almost every sector. Education couldn’t be insulated like every other sector. In fact, it was because of digital technologies that teaching could be seamlessly pursued during lockdown and virtual classrooms became normal.
During this period teachers also required a communication channel with parents for which they had to set up WhatsApp groups, as this is the most widely used app. Teachers also would diligently share important notifications and circulars with necessary instructions for students and parents.
Now while teaching has gone back to campuses, the mediums and channels set up during covid-19 are still in place. While teachers, especially the class teachers play a pivotal role of being the conduit between school and the children, the lack of proper digital infrastructure that every school should have invested in, has overburdened them. Today, a teacher has no less working hours than corporate professionals and are now used to perform official work beyond school timings. This has started impacting their family time, which in no ways is a good sign.
All privately run schools have a digital presence and their platforms do allow them sending notifications, circulars and other details for parents and students to take cognizance of. But, it has also at the same time become habitual that teachers are instructed by the school management to share such notifications and circulars with the parents of the children of their respective classes. Now, its not only about very important and critical notifications, but teachers are also asked to send ‘commercial’ notifications like organising a completely optional extra-curricular activity for which the school charges an additional fee. Sharing such notifications makes one feel as if teachers are made to do business development as well.
Sending reminders about project work, class tests, homework submissions, etc., has become very regular. Things that a student used to remember and note down in the school diary, are now sent by the teacher. Both students and parents are increasingly becoming casual as they know that anything important, rather everything, will be sent by the teacher over WhatsApp. So why bother! At the same time, its painstaking for parents to keep a track of important circulars and notifications as WhatsApp is not a very good medium of tracking and managing structured and formal communications. It is at the end of the day, a medium of grapevine!
There are a couple of major implications of this trend and how it is affecting teacher-student and teacher-parent relationships. A relationship with teacher has been since times immemorial been of regard and respect. It has always been formal and whatever the case may be teacher has always got an edge in the equation. Even in the cases where teachers have setup tuition centres, which are purely commercial centres, the respect for teacher is of same level. Now with this informal and anytime, anywhere kind of communication with the teacher has diluted this command of respect. Its not that any student or parent doesn’t respect the teacher anymore, but with this informal communication channel, the degree of respect has diluted.
A teacher’s job is never an easy one. Dealing with children of any age is a challenge and when in school one is dealing with scores of children its very taxing and sometimes brings with it occupational stress. Teachers also need a break when home and then they also have family commitments. But with this increasing trend of management expecting and requiring them to send updates, broadcast messages to parents, and share notifications eats up their personal time.
This behaviour has also affected privacy of teachers. The mobile numbers of teachers are easily available and even if they want to avoid to their best, they will continue to receive requests and queries from parents. These are their personal mobile numbers and are not provided to them by schools that they are mandated to perform official duties at the cost of diluting their privacy. This can also potentially lead to other kinds of misuse and abuse.
Teachers are also seen creating forms and collecting data, requesting students and parents for various details, and other such tasks which are mainly admin tasks. This is not only an additional burden on them, but further adds to the dilution of the respect they deserve.
Digital technologies are here to ease our tasks and make the most of our productive time. It is completely onus of the schools to invest properly and adequately in the digital platforms so that there is no communication gap between the students-parents and the school. At the same time, these platforms need to be user friendly to increase the engagement. Most of the schools have digital platforms that are not mobile friendly, while more than 90% of the parents would have smartphones to access these platforms. This experience gap significantly drops the engagement of parents or students with such platforms.
The schools will have to rekindle their digital strategy and build systems and processes that do not over burden teachers, dilute their respect among students or parents and at the same time make it extremely convenient for them to perform all the tasks within the official timings.
With now so many tablets available in the market, it might be a good idea for schools to offer teachers tablets as their companion devices which lets them conveniently leverage the IT resources of the school and manage sharing and notifications without affecting their privacy. In fact, the schools will have to redesign the entire digital platform and develop it with a holistic view factoring software and the hardware together. The schools will also need to make the parent facing views mobile friendly.
On this teacher’s day, lets collectively resolve to develop a digital framework for schools that has these tenants engrained making teacher as a primary stakeholder that in case affects or dilutes the dignity or privacy of teachers, the nation builders!
