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Unsung heroes: Educators do their best with challenge of online classes
Children and parents in Indonesia are having a hard time with online learning, but so are the teachers, and there’s not much sympathy and support for them.
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Aeera Nafisha, a student in Depok, studies alongside her mother Yuli Yudha. (JP/P.J.LEO)
V
ia Irianti’s day starts early and finishes late. In the morning, she would immediately get on her laptop, and enter the group chat with her fellow workers about their plan for the day. She then prepares her zoom classes and sets personalized tasks for each student she’s responsible for. After lunch time, there’s meetings with the teacher coordinator and some administration work. From late afternoon until late at night, Via checks the students’ video assignment, leaves comments and talks to the parents about their kids’ struggles.
For the first few months of online learning, this was a normal day for Via Irianti, a 30-year-old nursery school teacher in Yogyakarta, Central Java, and possibly for many other educators all over the country. Since COVID-19 hit Indonesia back in March 2020, the government has been forced to close schools and universities to limit physical social interaction, practically shifting all schooling activities online.
It was a big adjustment for everyone involved, but teachers, in particular, were forced to adapt quickly to this new environment. Via recalls that the first three months were the toughest. “It was like starting everything all over again,” She says. “We would work from home until midnight.”
Ben, a 25-year-old teacher at a private primary school in Yogyakarta who chose not to disclose his name, agrees that online learning requires more preparation time. “It’s not only about the content,” he said. “Now teachers also have to work on the delivery medium, whether it’s video or slides or pictures.”
Educators also had to go above and beyond their usual effort to maintain students’ interest, especially those who teach younger kids. Mellisa (not her real name), a 21-year-old English teacher at a private preschool in Cibinong, Bogor, claims that she would often dance and sing just to get her students to look at the screen. Via, meanwhile, often pretends to be a master of a variety show and sometimes emulates the act of a mukbanger (food vloggers who eat mass amounts of food) to keep her students engaged.
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