The landscape of education amid the Covid-19 pandemic
Karen G. Catu
It is a fact and irrefutable that the landscape of education in the Philippines as well as the entire global academic community has changed, or altered so to speak, with the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Radical” in nature, the pandemic brought about the prohibition of the all-too-long revered traditional face-to-face classes in which teachers and students interact each day and classroom activities are essential for engaging learners to achieve objectives geared towards quality education.
Technology and the once looked aside distance or modular learning have taken its place, alongside multiple challenges stakeholders in the academe confront during the pandemic, the system of education becoming virtual in its purest senses.
In the wake of all these, the Department of Education (DepEd) has exhibited and proved that it is adaptive to the situation and is flexible enough to hurdle the challenges the “new normal system” of education brings.
The pandemic has allowed the Department of Education (DepEd) to boost its support to teachers and stakeholders in the academe---from educators, administrative staff and other nonteaching personnel. Better yet, the pandemic has provided an opportunity to build back better and how best to help teachers to cope with the crisis, plus become better equipped with the skills to succeed in the aim of sustaining quality education for students in all levels.
With the educational process altered entirely, the government, spearheaded by the DepEd, responded by developing remote learning plans, which rely on multichannel strategies that combine different technologies (print materials, radio, TV, Internet, and/or mobile) and modular learning.
And despite its downsides, the pandemic has its perks to vis-à-vis education: teachers were quick to adapt lesson contents they designed to deliver in a physical setting to an online or distance learning and modular format. The ability to instruct effectively became a merit, appropriate skills and the capacity to adapt to the new context, while continuing to interact and effectively engage with learners and parents as “co-teachers” have become a norm and a benchmark.
And as the pandemic stretches on despite the availability of vaccines, academic stakeholders are expecting that more changes are coming their way.
--oOo—
III at San Francisco Elementary School
The author is Teacher