TEACHERS BRAVING COVID - 19

Michelle G. Hipolito

“Teachers are the lucky souls in this time of pandemic”, receiving complete salaries even without working, classes were re-opened and children are taught at home by parents and yet teachers get paid. These are just some of the bickering and issues teachers heard from the community and from other people who viewed teachers as indolent individuals yet favored well by the government.

Wearing the shoes of teachers would reveal the real situation how they work for education to continue amidst the crisis. Not seeing teachers work physically in school doesn’t mean they are not working. Due to COVID 19 pandemic, almost everything has been instantly and rapidly shift into online modes of delivery, even teaching will move to online-pedagogies. Thus, teachers as the major anchor in the teaching learning process need to equip themselves with self-learning skills and be sufficiently adept in using different online applications to continually deliver learning opportunities to children.

During this pandemic, when no one is allowed to go outside, teachers stayed at home with their gadgets or laptop open not to explore the social media neither play online games but to grab and tune in to online courses, webinars, facebook live streaming sponsored by DepEd and zoom classes available for continuing education.

Teachers are committed to cater what the Department of Education desires to offers. Gear with the “Education for All” objectives, the department offers alternative learning modes that fits all to access education in this time of crisis. Modular learning will be used by many households that have no access to internet or a computer and to areas with issues of connectivity. In this regard, some teachers were requested to prepare and write modules to be printed out and may turned into scripts and presented for TV-based instruction.

Teachers may not be seen in action as what is usual in the traditional face to face learning but even work from home or virtual, teachers are embracing the new normal of education and will continually work hard to brave the challenges poses by the COVID 19 pandemic to continually provide learning opportunities for learners.

Teachers joined the kick off of 2020 Brigada Eskwela (BE) that detour from the old physical cleaning, painting and repairing in schools to strengthening the support system of the school, engaging partners and stakeholders to support and assist the school to ensure a safe continuity of education for S.Y 2020-2021 amidst the risks of COVID 19.

Simultaneous to the BE, is the implementation of the modified remote enrolment where the distribution and collection of the Learner Enrolment and Survey Form (LESF) were done through phone calls, SMS messaging and online. The LESFs were then entered by the teachers into the End of School Year Learner Information System (EOSY-LIS).

Work from home challenged the honest, credible and value laden life being portray by a teacher but disruption in the delivery of modules nor the online classes does not happen. This just prove that teachers honestly work and perform their duties even without close supervision. Yes, teachers received their salary despite their absence in the classroom yet they performed their tasks well more than what is expected from them.

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III at Escaler Elementary School, Magalang North District, Magalang,

Pampanga

The author is Teacher