Teachers of Ganjam school walk the extra mile to reach students

BERHAMPUR: Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, online classes for school students have become the norm. But for those who are unable to attend virtual classes, either due to poor internet or lack of resources, help has arrived in the form of teachers turning up to teach at students’ homes.
Teachers of the government-run Utkalamani High School, Madhabandh, in Chikiti block have been going out of their way to do their job.Headmaster Sanjay Kumar Patro and the other teachers of the high school, including women teachers, have been visiting the houses of students in different villages, all located within a five-km radius of the school.
The 54-year old school, located on the border of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, has 285 students from classes I to X and 14 teachers, including the headmaster. The students of nine nearby villages study in the school.
“We started visiting the houses of the students from April, when the Covid-19 situation was at its peak,” said Patro. Starting their rounds at 9 am, every teacher would visit at least 20 students per day in different villages. Each teacher would have to make a round at least twice a week. With maintaining social distance and wearing a mask, the teacher would take classes in the veranda of each student’s house.
“Although the government asked us to conduct virtual classes for students, we decided to visit them individually as most students have no smartphones or laptops. Moreover, network is patchy in the area,” Patro added.
In fact, the practice of teachers visiting the students has been on for some years now. Earlier, they would do so during the vacations. “Usually, all the students of a village would gather in one house but, this time, teachers visited students separately after taking permission from the parents,” the headmaster said, adding that it helped strengthen the bond between the teachers and the students.
In order to encourage the students, the headmaster himself spent around Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000 every month to provide them with study material.