The lives of lakhs of people in the country changed rapidly with Coronavirus spreading its tentacles in no time. As the people learnt to cope during the first wave and were trying to recover, the second wave has struck. Schools were one of the few institutions that were shut to slow or counter the spread of the pandemic. Schools soon began offering online learning opportunities. However, this posed a greater challenge to not only schools imparting education to children with special needs, but also students with special needs, and parents of children with special needs as far as successful implementation was concerned.
In this background, speaking to News Karnataka, Vidya Doraiswamy, Founder-Director of Endeavor Extender Learning Services (EELS), shares an insider’s perspective on how special education has sustained in the online mode. This Bangalore-based educational centre works on placing children with special needs into the mainstream setup. They equip students with the foundational skills required in a classroom setting. She further explains the hiccups, breakthroughs, and gains of online education in EELS.
Elucidating the sudden changes in the learning process due to the shift to online education, Doraiswamy said, “In a face to face environment, we are able to handle all the domains. We would look at the social, behaviour, academic, and cognitive skills of the children. But in the online space, we have compromised social skills because although we do still have interactions, it’s not face-to-face. So, it’s 30% less than in a classroom setting. When it comes to behaviour, we are able to do absolutely nothing. While we are able to cue them on to maintain certain norms, the behaviours are not something that we can handle from a distance. This domain was impacted severely. Now, for behaviour modification, we’re dependent on the parents.” Doraiswamy elaborated that the involvement of parents is beneficial as she has always wanted parents, teachers and students to work together. This type of interaction makes for instant feedback and consequent corrections to the program.
“The progress of the children has been excellent. Some of them who had behavioural issues found it comfortable to be in a home-setting,” said Doraiswamy, speaking about the progress of children in the past academic year. She added that since there is no pressure on them to go to an environment that is completely new to them with different noises, they settle down much better in the comfort of their home. She emphasised that they contributed and did very well as the external environment that was upsetting them was no longer there, they were in the comfort of their homes.
The experienced educator said that the online mode of education puts extra pressure on the teachers. “The parents are constantly observing the online classes. So, every word that teachers say can be held against them. They have to be a little more careful which means more preparation time. Also, some of the parents could not attend classes. For them, we are required to send recorded videos. We were doing two modes of intervention – one live session and one recording session”, she explained. She added that teachers were doing double the work to ensure that every student gets all the lessons done. “But it created a good repository for us as we can access it and refer to it anytime,” she said.
Focusing on the students’ acclimatisation to online classes over the past year, she said, “Initially, children were very excited to use the computer and be in command of it. During offline classes, they used to get it for only half an hour a day when they had their computer session. Otherwise, they used to only play games on their parents’ phones. Basically, they didn’t have any dedicated device for them. But now many of the parents went ahead and bought dedicated devices for them – either a laptop or desktop. So, the children had total control of it, so they started using it for online classes.”
She further expressed with pride that children are extremely resilient and that they catch on to anything that’s given to them. They’re very quick in understanding what is expected of them. “We found that they were able to manipulate and navigate their way through it and find out what is to be done like turning or muting their audio”, she added.
Focusing on the extracurricular activities conducted in the past year, Doraiswamy said, “Co-curricular subjects like dance and music were all carried out even in the online mode without any hindrances. For music, we are tied up with the Shankar Mahadevan Academy and they took online sessions. Also, we have our in-house dance teacher and a physical education teacher. They took both live and recorded sessions. The children love the session because it’s the time when they can actually shake their legs and do whatever they want to. We did art as well”.
Circling back to pandemic-specific boons and banes, she explained that they also focused on practical life skills as part of the extracurricular activities. She said, “We did life skills to get them used to becoming independent at home. Since they’re in a home setting now, we could teach functional life skills in the afternoons, so the parents don’t have to worry about too much screen time. So, we introduced such practicals. If a parent has concerns about their child’s activities and daily living, we are able to work on that by breaking down challenges with eating, dressing up, etc. Since now they’re predominantly at home, whatever goals we set, they can try it out”. Doraiswamy’s multi-pronged approach is most vibrant in the execution of such feasible activities focused on the well-being of the children at EELS. It is evident that EELS educators have efficiently adapted to the curve balls thrown at them by opportunizing the pandemic-induced changes to the maximum extent possible.
Speaking about the progress lost in terms of the social skills of students due to the shift from offline to online education, she said, “For social skills, we start with sharing, caring and social pleasantries. Social pleasantries are still maintained because we say good morning, thank you, please even in the online setting. It also happens during ‘Circle Time’. Every day starts off with a ‘Circle Time’ when the class teacher meets her group of students. So, they all talk to each other about their day and there are fun activities planned. That’s the social component for the whole day. This way they’re familiar with their classmates. But then sharing and caring only happens when they are physically together. So, that’s been compromised. During lunchtime, they would automatically help those who have challenges with carrying their things. So, such sharing behaviour cannot happen now”.
When asked about their system of reinforcement and how it is implemented in online education Doraiswamy shared that for positive reinforcement, instead of star charts which can be counterproductive, they use verbal positive reinforcement. In the star system, a comparative and competitive air comes in so a lot of other qualities are compromised. She said, “What is a great effort for one child might come easily for another. So, we can’t compare if one is better or not, we’re not drawing parallels. Our verbal reinforcement is equity-based, not equality-based and this has been maintained even in the online platform”. This method suggests that EELS has managed to maintain most of its techniques and that their core principles remain unwavered despite rapid alterations to their medium of educational intervention.
As a conclusion, Doraiswamy spoke about the technical aspects of online education. “Zoom is currently what we’re using and we’ve found it satisfactory. We are happy with Zoom as our platform. We are able to share screens, add videos and show them things. We try not to use videos in live sessions. We try to share it with them or the recorded version so they are able to refer back to it. The same thing taught in three different ways always makes for greater understanding. So, we use PPTs, videos and live teaching to ensure that the concept is clear” she added.
Despite these unprecedented times, EELS has continued to systematically pursue and achieve its goals which have been tailored for the students. They have even gone the extra mile to set and incubate new and personalised goals that are nurtured by the home environment. Doraiswamy and her team of skilled special educators have adapted seamlessly to the online mode of education with their students’ best interests in mind. It is safe to say that EELS has not just coped with the pandemic and survived, it has thrived.
