Children, who do not have access to internet facilities and gadgets, use laptops in an open-air class outside a house with the walls converted into black boards following the closure of their schools due to the COVID epidemic in Paschim Bardhaman Area in Joba Attpara village in West Bengal, India, on September 13, 2021. PASCHIM BARDHAMAN, INDIA Oct 16 Reuters : In a small tribal village on the eastern tip of India an enterprising teacher turned walls into blackboards and roads to classrooms, with the aim of covering the gap in learning brought about by prolonged school closings in the country.
Deep Narayan Nayak, 34, a teacher in the tribal village of Joba Attpara in Paschim Bardhaman districtBardhaman district of the eastern state of West Bengal, has painted blackboards on the walls of houses and taught children on the streets for the past year. The local school closed down after strict COVID - 19 restrictions in March 2020 across the country were imposed.
On a recent morning, Nayak studied a wall with chalk and wrote in a microscope as children peered over it.
Education of our children has stopped since the lockdown was imposed. The children used to just loiter around. The teacher came and began teaching them, Nayak told Reuters, whose child learns with Kiran Turi.
Nayak teaches everything from popular nursery rhymes to the importance of masks and handwashing to about 60 students and is popularly known as the Teacher of The Street to the grateful villagers.
School across the country have gradually begun reopening starting last month. Some epidemiologists and social scientists are calling for them to open fully prevent further loss of learning in children.
An August survey of nearly 1,400 schoolchildren conducted by a Scholars Group found that in rural areas, only 8% were studying online regularly, 37% were not studying at all and about half did not know more than a few words. Most parents wanted schools to reopen as soon as possible, it said. Nayak said he was worried that his students would want to disappear from the education system and whose parents are daily wage earners, would most likely be shut away from school if they didn't continue.
I would see children ganging around the village, taking cow for grazing, and I wanted to make sure their learning doesn't stop, he told Reuters.