Here is a summary of activities carried out by the Thulir team during the corona pandemic between Mar’20- Sep’21.
Educational response during the pandemic
This pandemic has deepened the urban-rural, educated-uneducated and digital-nondigital fissures among us. The disease spread has been more in urban areas than in rural areas but in many ways the rural students suffer more. All over the world urban children and teachers are engaged in virtual classes. But teachers and students in Sittilingi and other rural areas have no smart phones or laptops and little or no internet access. Online education is impossible here.
In Sittilingi Valley, until a couple of years ago, we always had to go out to bigger towns to access the net. But even that was not possible in the lockdown. A few years back, the Tribal hospital got the only broadband connection in the valley. The rest of us struggled with highly erratic 2G mobile data. For most of 2020 it was a familiar sight to see young men go around the valley with their phones and laptops searching for good signal spots under a tamarind tree or a particular rock where a 2 G signal from the hills at very low speed may be accessed.
By late 2020, we extended the broadband connection from the hospital to the Thulir school using wireless network devices. Just this year, Sittilingi village has got a 4G coverage. Glitches are still there frequently but on the whole, our connectivity has improved. But most other villages in the valley still have limited access.
Our students are being left behind in the world of virtual education. Families that are struggling to put together two balanced meals a day are under great pressure to invest in smart phones and laptops for their college going children. Even in the homes that have one smart phone, it is very often in the hands of the men in the family and women and girl children don’t have access to it! This is true of our women teachers as well. Most of our lady teachers don’t even own a cell phone!
The first lock down- March 2020
In the initial months of the 2020 lockdown all of us at Thulir had to help the tribal hospital team and the panchayat teams in helping raise awareness about covid norms in the villages.
Schools were closed. There were no classes in the initial months. We believe that children learn more while watching adults work outdoors in the fields and homes than in the classrooms. And this was a great opportunity for them to do so.
From the beginning of June 2020 we brainstormed about activities which would force children outdoors and encourage them to learn from their parents and grandparents – observing plants, trees and insects around their farm, asking parents about them, drawing and writing about them, finding out from their grandparents how each millet is grown, writing about forest trees, finding out and recording weekly household expenditure etc. We prepared hard copy worksheets and learning materials and physically handed them to the children in the villages while observing covid norms.
This didn’t work out well. The sad fact about today’s villages is that many children are only exposed to adults watching TV serials, drinking alcohol or frequently fighting with each other most of the day. Most children live with their extended families in one- and two-room houses. So they had no physical and mental space at home to do any of these activities.
We realised that children need neutral, safe and supportive spaces, outside their homes, for their social, cognitive and emotional development.
Decentralised Classes
Since children were not allowed to attend schools, the school had to go to them! To help educate our children while complying with lockdown rules of not having large gatherings in institutions, our tribal teachers started holding decentralised classes from July 2020 for children in their own villages. These classes still continue. These happen mostly outdoors under a tamarind tree, on someone’s verandah or in open spaces next to the temple. Children from other private and government schools also attend. These classes happen in nine locations. Children have been divided into small groups and each group meets the teachers twice a week.
Worksheets and books from the library are given to the children after instructing them on how to use them. We show them good audio visual materials too. Games, craft, song and dance are also a part of these classes. The attendance in each session varies from 5 to 30!
Our teachers were very diffident at the beginning of last year to go out and teach mixed age groups of children in the villages. Teaching under public gaze is vastly different from teaching one particular age group in a disturbance-free atmosphere in a school setting! A series of motivational, training and academic classes had to be conducted through the year for them. But by the end of the year they grew in confidence and we are really proud of how they have all bloomed as educators and all that they have done so far.
Teachers work though the week taking classes, preparing learning materials, growing vegetables and millets and attending teacher training sessions. This has also been an opportunity for teachers to read, reflect, plan and improve their skills. We hold regular teachers training sessions, reflective and introspective sessions every week.
We are facing a historical educational crisis and we have to respond to it differently and innovatively! We need community learning and teaching! How do we deal with the academic learning and memory loss amongst children? At the same time, how do we acknowledge that children have learnt a lot from their experiences through the pandemic and build on that learning, focussing on their social-emotional-cognitive learning? It is up to us to imagine and create an effective learning movement!
The second wave and after..
The virus entered Sittilingi Valley during the second wave in May 2021 and there were many patients in every village. So these classes were stopped and all of us had to help in covid related work.
A teacher in a rural area can never remain strictly a teacher but has to play many roles as the circumstances demand.
Now the second wave has subsided and the decentralised classes have resumed from mid June onwards on popular demand from the villagers. These village classes have worked fairly well. Classes are held every evening in Rettakuttai and Palakuttai and twice a week in the other locations. Here are some of our observations.,
- Learning is very local, centred in the village and the parents and elders can see it happening and be a part of it.
- The teacher who is from that village gets more respect now than when she was just a daughter of the village!
- Some of the parents (and even some of our teachers) who were initially sceptical about our teaching materials and methods, could now practically see their effectiveness and see how our school students were academically better than students from other schools.
The challenges faced in these classes:
- These classes were most often outdoors under a tamarind tree or in clearings near a temple. They had to be shifted to someone’s verandah when it rained. Attendance would reduce during rains. Sometimes these spaces were also used by men gambling or drinking and so there were tensions and disruptions at times.
- Since they were taking place in the village itself, children would sometimes get called away from the classes for some errand or other.
- When classes were in someone’s verandah or front yard, parents who had some disagreement with that particular family would not send their children there.
- Students enrolled in government schools get their free mid day meal scheme as weekly supplies of rice, dhal, eggs and other groceries. Ten Thulir parents, who were economically affected by the pandemic, have removed their children from our school and have admitted their children in government schools in order to access these food rations. The parents feel that since we teach government school children too in the village classes, these children will still get the education from us and the food from the government school – the best of both schools!
Transporting children to school
We conduct classes for the children of our school twice a week at school. Prior to the pandemic, parents took responsibility for the logistics and costs of transporting their children to school. But the pandemic has affected many of them economically and they are finding it difficult to bear the transport costs.
As a stop-gap arrangement, we talked to the owner of a private minibus that operates in our valley and convinced him to change his route slightly in order to pick up our children on his way and drop them off near the school. The school will pay the transport costs for the children. Students and teachers are now using this service twice a week.
Workshops for mothers
We have started having practical hands-on workshops for mothers, teaching them activities they can do with their children at home.
Covid response
As our country grappled with the second wave of COVID, we tried doing our bit to help those whose lives and wellbeing were disrupted and affected by the deadly virus and the compelling lockdowns.
The deadly virus which had bypassed us in the first wave spread its tentacles into our valley in the second wave as people had dropped their guard and become complacent. There were no beds available in the nearby big hospitals to refer them to. One 50 year old man who was referred out died before he got a bed in any of the hospitals.
It was imperative that we had to be ready for the deluge ourselves . A community problem of this magnitude had to be tackled together as a community. Our decentralised classes were temporarily stopped and all of us had to help in covid related work together with Tribal Health Initiative , SOFA and the panchayat. Being a part of a larger group of individuals and institutions with the same values is our biggest strength in Sittilingi.
Hospital Care
Our friends at Tribal Health Initiative run a secondary care 35 bedded hospital here. They dedicated a 15 bed exclusive Covid ward with protective gear, oxygen, testing, medicines etc. for Level 1 and Level 2 Covid care. The experience of doctors treating covid patients all over the world has shown that if patients were tested early, put on oxygen and medicines in time, they mostly got over the disease. Those who lost their lives were mostly the ones who did not get these in time.
Community work
We realised that the only way the staff of this small covid ward would not be overcome by covid patients and lack of resources is to have community involvement and community prevention. Spaced village meetings were held by the panchayat in which some of us participated. Frequent announcements through vehicles and the local “tandoora” were made by the panchayat. Short videos with messages from our doctor friends at THI and the panchayat president were made and distributed on what’ s app groups in each village to motivate the youth. Youth volunteer groups were formed. Some of our teachers and their spouses joined these groups going home to home in each village identifying patients with fever and cold and guiding them for testing and treatment. Small shop owners and people coming to the milk collection centres everyday in the village were sensitised.
Data base of patients
Siddharth, Ram and Archana helped develop and maintain a data base of patients all over the valley. This helped doctors, nurses , the field health staff and volunteers and hospital helpline volunteers to co ordinate and follow up on patients in home quarantine and the patients who were discharged from the hospital.
Hospital helplines
Phone helplines were set up for patients to access help and guidance. Anu volunteered on one of these full time providing psychological support to patients in home quarantine and following up on those who were discharged but had to be still monitored. The huge fear of being stigmatized by the village, when one was corona positive, had to be assuaged. People with symptoms but yet undiagnosed and wanting advice would call at all times of the day. The older covid patients above 50 would brush all covid prevention norms and need for self isolation aside saying ” Only you city folk will get corona . We villagers work in the sun all day and will not get sick!” They had to be persuaded to self isolate.
Fortunately most of them would want someone to listen to their ailments and complaints ! Listening to them patiently would help most times. On the other hand, the 25 to 45 age group ,especially the men, were mostly very anxious and afraid, because of what they have seen on TV and Whats app. They needed someone to clarify doubts and provide reassurance.
Education and healthcare needs a sustained effort over a long span of time. There is still much more to be done. We hope we can continue to do this together.
We thank all of you for your consistent support during this very difficult time.