Neha Sharma: ‘Children need to bring gratitude back into their lives’

Teacher, Veer Savarkar Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya, New Delhi

This is my first year of being back in the classroom since the start of the pandemic. It’s been a learning experience for me, too. Being with my fifth-graders online over the last nine months, teaching and observing them, has given me direction on where to focus my energies next year.

I’ve been a primary-school teacher for over 10 years and in this Delhi government school, in Kalkaji, for a little over a year. Since April 2022, we are back after a two-year closure because of COVID-19. I could see that the children had no clear schedule. At home, there was no structure. The other handicap was the lack of interaction among peers.

This lack of order has led to children waking up whenever they want to and coming to school. Once they return home, too, they don’t keep to a schedule anymore. Earlier, we would give them homework to keep them occupied, but now we are more flexible and gentler with them. Most of what we give them to do are simple activities, but I find that often they are not even doing that. I would really like them to at least think about and reflect on what I taught them in class that day.

The other challenge is that with the absence of friends and seniors from school, it has yielded to a certain sense of individualism among children. They keep to themselves now. I don’t see the cooperative behaviour they used to have pre-COVID.

There is certainly a lack of empathy I find on the playground, too. I want to help bring about that quality, to put themselves in the shoes of others around them. For instance, to be mindful that when one of them pushes another on the playground, it hurts.

I hope that whatever strategies we use ahead will focus on group activities and teamwork, so that the children get involved, they get to know each other and understand each other’s feelings, and help each other.

We conduct happiness classes where we reintroduce them to ideas of respect and sense of ownership towards things and people. They need to bring gratitude back into their lives, be it for their school bags, their books or their teachers.

What I want to leave behind from the past two years?

I’d like my students to let go of indiscipline in their daily lives. Also, this lack of involvement they seem to have, this self-centred attitude

What I am looking forward to in 2023?

I want my students to grow in gratitude and empathy for one another and for things around them. I look forward to more collaborative learning

— As told to Sukrita Baruah