A teacher of English language and literature, Bangladesh 

 

Life before Covid-19  

 I teach English Language and Literature in a Government College in Mymensingh, Bangladesh. I have been teaching in this college for the last two years after I returned on completion of my PhD. The college offers different intermediate (HSC) level and undergraduate (BA) and postgraduate courses. I have 500+ students from all years. I am Head of the English department. The college is a very popular one in the Northern region as there are no other good colleges offering residential facilities especially for women. As this college has two hostels, it attracts a lot of female students from the neighbouring and adjacent areas as well, particularly from the northern territory.  

 Teaching these students pose lot of challenges. The students are not qualified enough in terms of their aptitude and language proficiency to study English at the Undergraduate or MA level. So, it is a huge challenge. For example- I have to conduct 60-70% of my English classes in Bengali. Otherwise it would make no sense to them. Their first choice is getting admission in a university. When they fail to do so, then they come to these colleges. So, teaching these students is a challenge because these students are not motivated, plus language ability is poor.  

Changed life as a result of Covid-19  

Before Covid-19, I usually commuted from Dhaka to Mymensingh and stayed there for a day or two depending on the workload. I have my family with young children in Dhaka. It is a 2-3 hours commute from Dhaka. Teaching was mainly face to face. 

Greatest concerns  

Now with online teaching, the problem is less scope of interaction. As I use Facebook for this purpose, I instruct them to provide comments on the page. So, after watching if they have any questions or queries or do not understand something, they can ask in the comments box. So, not only me but the other students can also see those comments and reply. I encourage this interaction very much that the comment box under the lectures uploaded remains very active. The problem actually lies at the receiver’s end. I have more than 100 students in my class but not even twenty seem to have watched these classes. It could be that these students have gone back to their village homes where they do not even have connectivity. The only way of connection is their mobile data. This is posing to be highly difficult. If I even upload a video of 20-25 minutes, to download this and watch is like a lot of data. The guardians even cannot afford to pay such large amounts for data. These are realities.  

আমাদের টিচারদের কাজগুলো আমরা করে যাচ্ছি। আমাদের কাজ আছে, দিকনির্দেশনা দেয়া আছে । কিন্তু receiver’s end এ কি হচ্ছে, none of us can ensure।. On the teachers’ part, I have my job and directives to get going with my responsibilities. But what is happening at the receiver’s end, none of us can ensure.

 Even I do not know how many of my women students have access to smart phones. Or even if they do, can they browse it properly, can they download a video?  

More challenges  

We have received instructions from the government to do everything online when the country went into lockdown. Since we are a government college, things were decided from the government and directives sent to us through notifications by the Principal and administrators. So, during these times, other than the physical movement or action, the background or policy level work has been continuing quite alright. I usually take preparation and upload my classes in Zoom. I have my Facebook pages dedicated to each year group. I do not feel much problem but at times do feel it is taking more time than usual for these preparations. I have been using Zoom to attend various meetings. In these two months, there was hardly any day that I did not have a class or meeting. So, I would say I have spent quite an active i.e. “virtually active” times. Usually I do not do real timed lectures as my girl students might not be in a position to attend for various reasons. 

We are speaking of all the physical and tangible issues but another great concern totally ignored is the mental health issue. The traumatic effect of Corona virus, remaining stuck at home, students becoming burden for the jobless parents, some of them cannot pay the house rent. We need to have counsellors and counselling sessions for the students. They are going through this trauma and have nobody to express. At this point education might not be their priority as they are dealing with things more serious. I think the parents of my students are more concerned to get their daughters married rather than continuing their education in times of crisis like this. 

Emerging opportunities  

We are going through “the biggest crisis of the century”. Our students are learning online, this is good. But I feel that we might have made better use of this opportunity like engage them in volunteering. These are learning points like the learning from crisis-management.  

এখন যদি ওরা না শেখে এই practical skillsগুলো তাহলে কখন শিখবে? বই পড়ে পড়েই কি এই skillsগুলো তারা শিখবে? If not now, when will they learn about these practical skills? Will they keep learning these skills only by reading books?

This could have a great opportunity to get involved and learn these life-skills. I am teaching online to get my usual teaching routine into action. Everybody is only thinking about the mainstream education.  

Hope for the future  

Students and teachers have now received orientation in Online education, because of this pandemic now everybody’s is trying to be online, like the use of Zoom has increased. I feel from this point we will not look back. We will be facing forward.  

এমনকি যখন কভিড situation ঠিকও হয়ে যায়, এই অনলাইনে কাজ করার অভ্যাসটা আর যে expertiseটা আমরা develop করেছি সেটা কিন্তু আমাদের রয়েই যাবে। Even when the COVID situation will improve, the habit of working online and the expertise that we have developed during the crisis will remain with us

 And I intend to use this fully as ours is a densely populated country. And using online facilities might prove really effective in getting to the mass. If there are any ways to come to terms with the mobile companies so that students can download or watch the educational videos for free or at a reduced price would be a great initiative. So there are good sides to the crisis.