‘Teachers’ role during pandemic needs acknowledgment’

Islamabad: World Teachers Day, falling on October 5 is a reminder for acknowledgment of the extra-ordinary role played by the teachers through continuing their mission to educate students during the challenging the academic atmosphere of COVID-19 pandemic in the country.

The role of the teachers in building an educated society cannot be overlooked especially during the unusual situation like the prevailing pandemic when teachers have a larger role in ensuring the safe and healthy academic environment by ensuring compliance of all the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) devised by the authorities.

Since the start of the pandemic in the month of April till today, the teachers had gone through a process of transformation of their teaching styles through adopting the online mode of teaching with putting extra efforts and hard work.

And now after the reopening of the educational institutions, they are keeping both online and physical classes schedule side by side for the safety of students, giving extra time to cover up the syllabus.

Talking to this agency, Farzana Akram, a senior teacher at Islamabad Model College for Girls I-8/4 said, During COVID-19 pandemic, the online teaching system emerged as the most important substitute before the teachers and it was something new for me and my students to interact online.

Simple things took much longer while teaching through online tools. “I remained busy in teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic and spent several hours to teach my students and felt caught between my students and my family,” she said.

“Whenever my cell phone rang, I answered the messages of students and their parents at all hours of day and night during the crisis, and didn’t get adequate sleep,” she continued. However, all this tiredness of teachers vanishes away and energy is completely restored when students present flowers on Teachers day, she added.

Ayesha Kiran, a lecturer at Islamabad Model College for Girls (Postgraduate) F-7/2 said, People, believe teachers job is only limited to the classroom but when all of the classes are dismissed, the day isn’t over for the teachers".

It is a routine matter for the teachers to spend hours of their time outside of classroom time as they take their work home with them like Lesson preparation, writing lesson plans, grading, tomorrow’s material to prepare.

There are still a lot of responsibilities like administrative tasks which the teachers have to perform besides taking care of the students, she said. Moreover, they perform election duties in general and local elections but when it comes to teachers they are less rewarded as compared with other government servants, she lamented. Professor Tahir Mahmood a representative of Federal Government College Teachers Association(FGCTA) said, Teachers, push students to do their very best. They shape the minds of future generations that can change the future of the nation but unfortunately, they are under appreciated.

Consequently, teaching has happened to be less appealing profession today and there is no formal recognition of teachers on teacher’s day at the state level. Teachers are paid poorly in comparison to the employees of other government departments and ministries. They have to beg for the timely release of their rental ceiling, pensionary benefits, and other monetary benefits which is something not understandable.