Avira Bhatt

Student Grade 7, Heritage Xperiential Learning School, Gurugram

Until 2019, schooling was regular learning for us students, going to school in the morning and coming back in the afternoon. In 2020 everything flipped around and turned online due to the coronavirus pandemic. With improvement in the COVID situation in 2021 came the unheard concept of hybrid learning. Last year, hybrid learning arrived to address the covid protocol on allowing only 50% of students in a class. Under hybrid learning, half of the students would be physically attending physical school, while the other half would be online. Many schools adopted the concept for several reasons, the chief being that it would slowly help move towards 100% physical schooling. I, too, participated in this phenomenon and have come to one conclusion; it needs a relook. Let me explain why.

An evolving concept

When we look at hybrid learning in a 2-dimensional perspective, it makes sense perfect sense, it helps the kids who want to experience school come on alternate days, and kids who are not comfortable or still covid conscious can stay at home; everyone is happy! Although we are ignoring a crucial thing, lack of childcare. Sure, some parents will be able to afford to stay home and pick and drop their child after a few hours, but most working parents can't because their offices are also open. Like Michael Madowitz, an economist at the Center for American Progress said, “the benefits of being able to work a little less part-time and a little less erratically are not going to be anything like what you’d be getting from full-time school”. The problem was most severe for women, who still shoulder most caregiving responsibilities. Many parents want to send their kids to school, but not on the bus, which is a reasonable requirement that also costs them. You can't blame them for wanting their child to experience things safely, but they avoid sending their kids altogether through the hybrid learnings model.

Teachers bear the brunt

Imagine this; you must make a complex dinner for a celebrity chef Gorden Ramsey while doing heart surgery on five walruses; I think that's what it feels like to be a teacher teaching during hybrid learning. The way hybrid works is that teacher comes into the class, joins the online course from her computer, projects them on the whiteboard, and teaches both simultaneously. This completely obliterates personalized learning and forces the teacher to take care of and satisfy all students in entirely different mediums. The teacher must prepare paper worksheets for the class in a physical school, publish the same one online, and monitor if anyone has any questions. It’s an unnecessary and unreasonable amount of workload we are putting on teachers, and we need to consider their burnout and mental exhaustion when it comes to learning.

The feeling of being left out

Since hybrid schooling is based on the fact that half the students are online and the other half isn't, it, in turn, means that half the kids get to have a particular experience, while the other half don’t. A clear example I faced was when our school decided to celebrate Diwali by making the kids coming to physical school make rangolis and have sweets, while the other half watches them feeling left out. I am not saying that this is done every time, but you have to admit that a few things just can't be done online and vice versa. The neglect of this made several of my peers and classmates who couldn't afford to come to physical school feel left out and unmotivated; that's not what students want from their schools.

To conclude, is hybrid learning is waste of schooling? No. Is it a silver bullet for schooling woes? Absolutely not.

The cases of coronavirus infections are increasing with each passing day, and not no one knows if this is the last wave or there will be fourth, fifth or sixth waves well. Therefore, we have no idea what the form of education is in 2022? But one thing is sure that there will be a lot of back and forth between physical and virtual schooling. Hybrid schooling is something in between which can bridge the gap, but it needs further refinement. One way to address the problem would be to acknowledge its shortcoming.