Mischief, mayhem make online classes a nightmare for teachers

Strap: Students pull all kinds of pranks to disrupt classes

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, July 24

While online classes might have facilitated the learning process amid pandemic, several teachers have expressed concern over lack of decorum that used to prevail in normal classrooms. Many of them said keeping students in check was becoming difficult for them.

From switching off the videos to making strange sounds, students have been playing all sorts of pranks with the teachers during the online classes to disturb them. They even keep sending them live messages in the chatrooms.

It is also a common practice for children to enter the Zoom or Google Meet rooms, show up once and then switch off their videos and then disappear. While a few teachers manage to handle students well, whenever the teachers go lenient, the children tend to leave their phones or devices and keep loitering around at house munching food, chatting with their friends, playing games while the teacher goes on with the lecture. Even the parents have reported that they have faced a tough time making the children sit back and be attentive.

A teacher from St Joseph’s Convent School shared, “Sometimes, a students's video goes off and we keep calling his name but he does not respond. Students go missing amid ongoing classes. Then, we have to warn them repeatedly that they would be considered absent if they do not respond. At times, we have to complain about such students to their parents on WhatsApp.”

A parent of a Class V student of Apeejay School shared, “Sometimes I sit next to the child to see what the teacher is teaching and often find teachers getting irritated by the repeated disturbance by the children in the class. Instead of concentrating on what the teacher is telling, the students would instead keep asking their teacher to take their attendance. There would be others doodling on white board and still more sending messages as to when the class would be over.

Rekha Sharma, a teacher from Police DAV Public School, said, “We have to keep telling the students to keep their videos on. We keep a check to ensure whether students are responding. We are taking their attendance on Google forms, so that it is not challengeable later. We are adopting several techniques to mind the classes at our end.”

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