Learning and Teaching Away From Delhi

As the school year is coming to an end and India is still struggling with its second wave of COVID numerous students and faculty have left Delhi and are now learning or teaching from somewhere else in the world. Whether you’re also out of the country, going to leave soon or maybe you’re just curious about what doing school is like in a different time zone this is the article for you. I interviewed Mr. Currey who is currently hosting zoom classes from Texas and a 7th grade student who travelled to the US as well. Students and teachers are in slightly different situations, teachers that are outside of Delhi still host zoom classes and teach no matter the time while many students are continuing this school year with asynchronous learning. For Mr. Currey (and I assume many other teachers as well) the biggest obstacle is the time change. “I think it’s a challenge because like I’m definitely up in the middle of the night and then during the day, it feels like I have a whole other day too. I’m not sleeping enough.” Lack of sleep is a real challenge especially because he has to teach pretty much all night and still get up that day. Mr Currey and his family stayed in Delhi last year because “We wanted to stay for our students, we wanted to stay for the school, we felt safe medically.” “The difference this time was that we couldn’t get vaccines in India, I was able to land and get the vaccine that same day so from a medical perspective it made sense.” The hospitals in India are kind of a mess at the moment so if anything urgent happened Mr. Currey didn’t want to have to go there. He and his wife knew they would be able to efficiently do their jobs, they knew it was going to be a challenge but it’s a challenge they can handle. Students have a different perspective because they were able to finish the school year asynchronously. Some students outside of Delhi are still attending zoom classes because the time difference isn’t too bad. But you already know what class on zoom is like, so I interviewed a fellow student who left Asia at the end of April and is completing school asynchronously. “Asynchronous work is so much harder than synchronous work because you aren’t there on zoom to hear instructions and ask direct questions. I do miss zoom because of its convenience to ask questions.” One of the benefits of zoom was that we could ask questions and share our concerns with the teacher right then and there. Asynchronous school you’d have to email teachers but because of time zones you won’t get a response quickly. This student is also planning on returning to AES next school year with the hopes of the school opening up full time again. After I publish this I’ll finish packing and then soon head to the airport. See ya next year! See more stories from #Hannah !