Things we learn thanks to Covid-19

In the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, that no one knows exactly how to manage, I would like to take this opportunity and congratulate every teacher for saving the year for pupils.

Besides impacting on economies, health and radically changing people’s lives, the pandemic grossly affected learning and teaching. However, with the unprecedented disruption to education, teachers still developed novel approaches to connect with and teach pupils.

Like other front-line workers such as doctors and nurses, we owe these outstanding, resilient and brave teachers our appreciation and thankfulness.

This contagion has proved to me the interrelated and the interreliant nature of humanity and that the world is truly a global village. The pandemic brought people closer and taught us life skills such as solidarity, compassion, empathy and the value of collective efforts – giving our shallow lives the true meaning of being human beings.

The year will be remembered as the one of the virus, masks, sanitisers, lockdowns, Zoom meetings and remote or online learning, to name some of the trials we faced.

In future, when people look back at 2020, we will realise that these challenges gave us a new perspective of life. Hence, I believe together with thanking teachers and acknowledging pupils who have worked so hard, the best teacher award should go to ... Covid-19 in the category of life skills education. Mohamed Saeed