Learning During the Pandemic

"Wear your mask. Now, wait till the count of 10," Vanila Ghai, a special educator based in Noida, India instructs students via a zoom call every morning. Even before the count ends, most children remove their masks restlessly. These special needs children - those having learning, behavioral or other disabilities -  are mostly experiencing anxiety. “They don't understand why they can't go out of their homes and if they should, then why wear a mask,” said Ghai. 

As part of online classes, Ghai’s students are taught to cope with the pandemic. Every few days, the count to keep their masks on gradually increases from 10 to 20, 30 and then 40 seconds. "Eight months since the pandemic, they are yet to accept this new normal life,” she said.  Children with special needs face one or various difficulties - such as a physical, emotional, behavioral, or learning disability or impairment. For instance, if a child is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, he or she may have no emotional connection with any person, or may be sensitive to changes in routine.  

To have something on their mouth or ears all the time becomes very suffocating for these children. “They have sensory overloads or underloads. It is due to the nature of their disability that they don’t accept these small changes in life and having a mask is, at times, very suffocating for them. But we train them to adapt to this new normal,” said Ghai. However, every special needs child has his own pace to adapt to a new environment.

This pandemic has thrown multiple challenges at teachers like Ghai and children across the world. According to census reports, there are approximately 26.8 million persons with disabilities in India, i.e. 2.21% of the total population. Cerebral palsy, autism, dyslexia and deafness are among the 21 types of conditions which the government classifies as ‘special needs’. These children require therapies from special educators. The State of Education Report for India 2019 states that there are 7,864,636 children with disabilities in India. Out of these, 61% aged between 5 and 19 were attending educational institutions before the pandemic. As children and parents struggle with online learning, working mothers have played a greater role during this pandemic.

A student sitting along with a parent, sometimes being tightly held or otherwise seemingly distracted, hears Ghai’s instruction through their computer: “Identify a bird in your book.” As the student does the exercise, Ghai is quickly helping her son, Aryan, add color to a picture. Aryan,13, is sitting next to her and has been assigned an activity to do. This is almost an everyday scene at Ghai’s residence. She is a mother to an autistic child and a special educator, on whom development of other special needs children is mostly dependent.

Even as Ghai simultaneously manages both roles of being a parent and a teacher, she herself has undergone stress during the pandemic. When a day isn’t planned well in advance for her son, she worries how it will affect his learning abilities. “I assign daily activities for him which is a mix of both his favorite and unfavorite activities,” she said. “The free time he gets these days has increased drastically as I am engaged and my husband is not home. That’s the disadvantage of being a mother and professional working from home.”  

The pandemic has had disparate effects on certain communities. In this case, special needs children and their working mothers are struggling to cope.

Ghai’s husband, Sachin Bhatnagar, who works in a leading paint company in India, had to report to work in June, when most offices in the country were allowed to operate partially. “It is a stressful period since then, for my wife to manage both work from home and a child in my absence,” he said. Bhatnagar’s profession demanded that he travels to work everyday.

“There was little choice, to be honest. Since I work in a senior position, it was important for me to be at work. As a result, all the burden naturally fell on my wife,” he said. Ghai had to make requests to her school to be more flexible with her schedule and class timing for two months. “They were kind enough to understand my situation,” she said. “During the class, if something calls with an urgent matter, I just ask the parents in the class to wait for 2-3 minutes."

Ghai is not alone. The pandemic has also led to anxiety among thousands of parents across the country.

“I was worried how my daughter would respond to stay-at-home orders,” said Preeti Dahiya, one of the parents based in Noida. Luckily, her 10-year-old daughter, Avani, who is diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) adapted well to the situation.

Dahiya is a television news anchor announcing news bulletins from a makeshift studio in one of her bedrooms at home. In the opposite room, her daughter, Avani, is attending online class with her father. Most of the time, she wouldn't realize her mother’s new workspace. “Luckily, Avani has not barged into my room while I am on-air,” said Dahiya. “But I often hear her screams and shrieks.” Sometimes, during a commercial break in a news bulletin, she allows her daughter inside the room for a few minutes. 

Just like parents of other kids, the challenge for Dahiya was to get her child on to online classes. She was apprehensive that Avani wouldn't be able to cope in terms of understanding what the teacher is really saying. “To our surprise, she coped up really well. From one hour a day we actually went up to three hours of online therapy.”

Most mornings, Avani starts her laptop, enters password and attempts to log in for her class. She uses technology better than before; a development seen as a huge achievement in autism spectrum disorder.

“Teaching them online is a team effort now. To have a parent, grandparent or caregiver accompanying the student during the zoom call is mandatory,” said Ghai. They are known as prompters. This also means a new challenge for educators: training the parents too.

Moreover, Ghai is also the prompter to her son and a teacher to other students on the same day.

Like the rest of the world, India shut down its schools in March, but even eight months later, there is no plan of action for students with special needs.

“Unfortunately, the government just forgot that such children exist,” said Dahiya. Her husband mostly travels overseas for work; while she is no longer allowed to work from home. It means for her, leaving home at 5 am and returning around 2pm. After a long day at work, she comes back to attend online classes with her daughter. “I am waiting for schools to start. This kind of a schedule leaves us, mothers with no time for ourselves,” she said. “It is taxiing.”

Similarly, on days when Ghai can't spend enough time with him, he is watching out from the balcony or playing with cotton balls. Sometimes, just watching television. “It is worrying because on such days there is less mobility of the body,” said Ghai. What also remains a concern and makes it even more challenging for her is: Aryan has entered the teenage and now on the onset of puberty.

“If I had been only the mother, I would have utilized this time to train him for different skills. There are certain behavioral changes observed in him right now but being a teacher, my prime teaching time goes with other children,” she said.

Educators feel nothing replaces what they learn in school.  “In the school environment, a lot of learning happens: social competencies, play development, physical development, peer interaction. The progress rate during in-person classes is much higher as compared to online classes,” said Dr. Himangshu Das, former director of India’s National Institute of Multiple Disabilities. “Two important segments: learning institution-based new skills and society- or community-based domains have been affected in the last 10 months. Both are important for their development.”

The online school hours are around one to three hours for every child as against the usual school timing of 8am to 2pm before the pandemic.  Based on the child’s severity of difficulty or his or her needs, parents can opt to increase the session time.

Dahiya’s husband, who generally could not spend time with his daughter during the pre-pandemic days, attended classes and assisted her until recently. “This phase has been a blessing in disguise. It helped build a bonding between me and Avani, which is a big achievement in autism spectrum conditions," said her husband, CG Aiyyapa. "By spending time with Avani in her online classes, I realized she is far above our levels of understanding, and we regularly underestimated her abilities.”

Due to online learning, he now has a better understanding of her academic standards, where she stands, what she knows and the ways of getting things done from her.

However, not every child has been lucky. In Ghai’s school, at least 5 out of 40 students have dropped out of school in the last six months. Because some of the parents who have been part of the essential services, reported to work during the pandemic. A special online class for their child during odd hours - late evening or night - became a new normal for special educators in India. “In certain cases, some of our colleagues also volunteered to visit the child’s home despite the risk involved,” said Ghai.

If therapies for students do not continue, there is a tendency of regression in children’s growth. “There will be loss of learned skills, formation of negative behavior and impact on therapy oriented goals which are dangerous for the growth and development of children with special needs,” said Das.

Knowing the consequences, special educators are working beyond their usual hours. But teachers like Ghai do not receive any financial assistance from the government. “Instead we are working with a significant salary cut since the shutdown,” she said. Six years ago, she quit her well paid job as a wealth manager with a multinational company in order to learn special education. Her intention was to better understand autism and help her son.

In online classes, these special educators are not only teaching students but they are also training parents. They also spend several hours before class preparing the required materials. Similarly, parents have been forced to pay the full fees even though class hours have reduced. Most of the lower-middle class families are badly affected due to this.

As India has lifted the lockdown, most parents are no longer working from home. But the schools remain closed. “How would we accompany our child?  There is a huge fear of regression,” said Dahiya. 

Data source: The State of Education Report for India 2019

Special educators in India have tried to come up with the best possible solutions. For instance, they have now started to have shadow teachers. This teacher works as an assistant teacher who would be present in-person in school. The child can be dropped at school by their parents while they leave for work. There is no government approval for this but a mutual solution between parents and the school administration was found in the process.

Dahiya attempted to do this. However, within a few weeks, there was a coronavirus case reported in school. “I had to discontinue and now go back to online classes with her,” she said.

Not just the children but even their service providers are now suffering. Many special educators had to close their schools because the owner of the office space they rented did not give any relaxation on the lease amount during the pandemic. Vidya Jha, a special educator based in Delhi said, “These students need more attention and support during the pandemic, yet educators like me are facing huge challenges.”

But even if schools re-open, their struggles won’t end soon. “When they start schools, there would be discipline issues, learning related challenges and a struggle to break the habit of online classes,” said Ghai. 

The challenge will be the same: this time to help them adapt to classrooms. “It will take several months to fill the gaps and let things fall back in place,” she said. Their journey back to normalcy will be far from over.