What a Pandemic it is to be a Female Educator!

What a pandemic it is to be a female educator!

Three weeks ago, I poured on my dissatisfaction with one of my close friends who had organized a talk series about the impact of online teaching and learning in the education sector about why his series had no female educators as a speaker.

“We did it in a hurry and realized what a mistake we had done.” He answered accepting the blunder.

Last week, I huffed and puffed around working as one of the core members of a virtual conference which was bringing national and international speakers on the same. I didn’t want to repeat the same blunder and was asking our team to make the panel gender-inclusive right from the beginning. The outcome; we had one female speaker among the ten speakers that too from the United States of America.

Whose mistake was it?

This question has been lingering in my head.

The answer is no one.

The problem was neither with the intention of my male team members; they never thought female educators were less capable, nor it was the problem of all the female educators who declined our invitation.

When social media is flooded with #WorkfromHome slogans, I wonder how many women are juggling to find a balance between office work and the household chores.

Amid this chaos, being able to peep in closely into the households of few of my female colleagues who are a crucial part of a team enthusiastically walking on the path to becoming the trailblazers of interactive online education, I feel for the other female educators too. I can understand how for so many female educators working from home and advocating for online education is a burden. I can understand how they are expected to be teaching while at the same time cooking meals for their family. I can make sense of why they are turning off their camera while they are talking to their students because on the other side they are patting their crying toddlers.

Married female educators are facing greater challenges than unmarried ones. It doesn't mean that unmarried women aren't having any issues. Some relatives and friends might think that if you’re at home you must be available for long lunches or emergency chores. When teaching itself wasn't considered a profound profession in our society, working from home and teaching online isn't being taken that seriously by so many of our families.

Who is to blame for this? The families or especially the husbands?

I don't know. 

What I know is that in one way or the other our society bounds us with untold expectations and a sense of perfectionism. Work from home has broken the barrier of what females need to fulfill as a mother, a wife, an employee, a sister, a teacher as separate and made it wholesome. This notion has now slowly started to become a mindset that both men and women are carrying inside their heads. When we are talking about the new normal that we are shifting into, we are ignoring the untold new normal that our families are unknowingly transferring to the new generation that household chores are always the work of women and when they work from home, kitchen, children, family, and husband must be their first priority. Hidden values and models from our cultures, families and other sources are still influencing our choices in ways that we often don’t anticipate or understand and that have far-reaching consequences for our lives. As I am writing this, I am not here to blame any males or any family members because I have seen some of my male friends and colleagues being very careful about sharing the responsibilities of both home and children.

Recently, one of my Instagram friends sent a direct message writing “you are a lucky woman to have found your husband” on the story that had me and my husband dancing after a long week. I replied, "I think it is the other way around for him too.” In cases like these, I wonder whether my husband is supportive because he genuinely is a flawless human being or is it because I have shared my need for space and need for his equal contribution in whatever we decide to do. The answer is the latter. Not only him, we both make mistakes about each other if we assume about the roles and support that we are expecting but having an open and honest conversation helps. I understand this holds true in my case as I have the privilege of expressing in front of my husband and my in-laws which might not be true for so many other females working from home.

Therefore, I think in this pandemic as we are cleansing our hands, a little cleansing of our mindset would definitely make our lives better.  A little self-reflection with a pinch of self-acceptance comes handy along with the sanitizers we are using this pandemic.

I’m open to teaching online but there’s something that’s bothering me

If you are an educator and are reading this, did you ever imagine that you would someday take your classes wrapping your legs with a warm blanket and sipping the morning ‘ghar ko chiya’? While on the other side, your students would also be doing the same and you aren’t bothered?

Amid this chaos and crisis, when educators from all over the globe have pulled up their sleeves to tackle something so humongous and uncertain and giving the world a serious challenge, I am a little bothered.

No, I am not bothered about how I have to now separate some extra hours to learn a new interactive online tool to deliver to match the same level of interaction that used to happen in my onsite classes. Rather, my concern is about how the world is taking a huge jump towards online education and is less bothered about considering the emotional and mental wellbeing of the students that might arise from suddenly shifting into online education from an onsite education.

Here, I am not in anyways trying to call myself a sorted out teacher. I am also learning; learning to use new tools, learning to deliver at a much slower pace, learning to make the students speak but at the same time watch who is raising her hand and who is already sharing in the chatbox. I am learning to learn each day.

But here, I am trying to place myself in the shoes of the students and trying to figure out what might they be thinking? How might they be taking all these changes? Most importantly, how might they be feeling?

With innovative delivery technologies, teachers can now switch to online teaching without compromising any of their interactive techniques of their onsite teaching. But how open have we been with students by asking them if our ways have been as effective as we deem them to be when teaching on-site? How have students taken this sudden transition? How are they adapting and what kind of support do they want from their teachers? How worried are they?

Furthermore, researches have shown that the difference in students’ technological expertise, unmet needs for human contact, lack of self-motivation, or feelings of isolation can deter success in online courses. This might not just affect our slow learners but also the ones whom we put in the 'green' zones. Especially in the context like Nepal, where the internet bandwidth is still a problem and students have to choose whether to turn the camera on and give their teacher a warm smile or to turn that off for the uninterrupted voice of the teacher, it is hard to read if they are emotionally in the 'green space' for learning. Learning is as much as a function of a person’s emotional response to a learning environment as it is to the instructional method or classroom.

While some students might be facing technological issues, some might be facing disturbance in their surroundings when the context that we are in at the present moment isn't that favorable in most of the families who might be practicing quarantine and are living in isolation. Therefore, online learning might elicit frustration, anxiety, apprehension, and incompetence for some while at the same time it might bring excitement and pride in what one has accomplished even in the middle of this crisis. So finding the right emotional state for learning is challenging. 

In this context, attending emotions in the classroom enables both student and instructor to manage feelings and provides useful methods to address difficulties that could deter success. Yes, it is undoubtedly helpful if you can separate some time to talk to each of your students even after the class to learn about their psychosocial status, but if you feel that you are in a crunch of time or you feel doing this is intervening your or your students' personal space, then just spending a few minutes to checking in how they are feeling and listening wholeheartedly is very significant.

It is not about how quickly you shifted into online teaching but it is about how slowly and steadily you planned to take the account of your students' emotions and making them adapt this transition. It is not about how you are proud of your and your students' technological advancement but about how comfortable you are sharing each other’s vulnerabilities. Success in online courses is probably a combination of technical, personal, cognitive, motivational and psychological factors.

To all the educators who have taken up this challenge of transition, I share your pain and pleasure. Let's work together to make this world a better place.