Educational Psychologist Indonesia

Mrs.Devi Venugopal

Great to catch up with you all on another most essential topic, Zoom fatigue. All of us are in one way or the other feel low and exhausted due to the online learning and Work From Home (WFH). Kids being home always in front of the screen takes a toll on their physical and mental health. The moms are on the verge of breaking down, with everyone around and kitchen running 24/7. Dads are frustrated with the amount of time in calls and WFH, not meeting teams, and lacking
social connection.

In today’s topic, I will focus on the students and how to take them off-screen as much as you can, what methods schools and teachers can adapt to have healthy online learning. The needs and responsibilities vary with the age and grades of the students.

With the challenging situation in hand and the uncertainty of the new normal. Mental Health in many countries is deteriorating at a rapid rate. Are we as a community ready for the Post COVID Era with resources to deal with the depression, suicidal notions, and anxiety? We need to be proactive and provide a better online learning setting for the students and teachers, building the foundation of the future.

Up to Grade 5 – Elementary School

Schools need to reduce the load of academics and make sure the students make a social connection during school hours. For example, in an international school in Jakarta, every ten days once, it is a community day. The day has several fun-filled activities such as folding a shirt in a minute, create your coloring mandala, make your obstacle path, tie the shoelaces in 30 seconds, learn to knot the tie. These activities make the student be off-screen for a long time and do something with the siblings and family. Weekly Friday, talking with kids about their emotional zone and providing them some tips when they are red zone. This knowledge empowers the students; they feel secure about their emotions. Weekly once, each Grade in the school can have a Zoom lunch where the kids can talk about their interests with the adult supervision.

Middle School Grades 6 – 8

Physical education and Flexi programs such as dance, singing, instruments must be a part of the everyday schedule. Fun challenges such as Hit the target – using simple tools in the home, set up to hit the target, can create some fun-filled memories. We can include grade level fun day and make some fun videos and post in the google classroom. Online learning is the time when kids want to spend some time after school with friends. It gives a wide area to create community clubs, where the school is connected to some NGOs and works to help the vulnerable population. Counselors’ corner for students from each Grade once a month is vital, especially to the parents who are handling online learning of the kids. During this time, we raise awareness and ask for help from the parent community to share the expertise to direct the kids’ energy.

High School – Grade 9-12.

This age group is under a lot of pressure in academics; when surveyed few HS kids informed that they spend around 12 hrs of screen time only for academics on the laptop. It is a big ‘No’ if considered their physical and emotional well-being. The teens enjoy after school activities like service clubs and cooking classes conducted by teachers and seniors. Extracurricular activities are a healthy way to enhance their emotional well-being. School can spread the assessments across the semester and give sufficient break between classes is crucial. The most critical factor is to have Physical movement through rigorous physical education and health education. Sharing nutrition ideas and having electives such as music, instruments, and dance.

We need to equip ourselves with online learning; the 12 ways to promote a healthy online environment are as follows:

  1. Establish a regular schedule with a pattern of community time every ten days once.
  2. Encourage interactive sessions, no muting audio, and video while the session is on; they need to set up a private learning space in the common area.
  3. Teach organization and time management – set up regular meetings with students sharing tips for time management and sharing ideas.
  4. Be flexible – the online home environment can be quite challenging with power issues, wifi problems, gadgets sharing, and family members sharing the space.
  5. Give students a choice – empower them with options that make the learning enjoyable.
  6. Demo learning in different ways – School teachers network, sharing their experiences, which best worked and didn’t help us understand the view from the teachers and school perspective.
  7. Use multimedia – provide video, audio, educational apps like Brainpop, Epic, google classroom.
  8. Conference with small groups – have the breakout room sessions with adult supervision for Elementary kids and proper technology agreement with Middle School and High School students.
  9. Use games to meet each other – examples like the show and tell for younger classes, word power, meet and greet. For Middle and High School – give some reflection time on the day and workload and brainstorm ideas.
  10. Check-in on student well-being in a regular timeline and be open for feedback and encourage them to email to teachers and counselors if any issue.
  11. Share yourself as a real person – it is an excellent way to connect. Both the teachers and students can share their talents and have chit chats.
  12. Create shared norms – crucial to have a healthy classroom behavior, necessary to give constant reminders to the students to imbibe – be polite and kind, yet firm in drawing the boundaries.

Encourage self-advocacy among students and educators need to be open to feedback and respond to the issues promptly. Always the teacher should be the first point of contact for any difficulties in learning. We need to consider that teachers also invest a lot of time in online preparation, and they did not sign it for it. Let’s be appreciative and kind, so we all can move forward in a positive direction with no one left behind.

Sometimes, all schools don’t have all kinds of resources, but if all stakeholders join their hands during the challenging time, we can help them sail through the situation more pleasantly. Sharing our time, talents, and passion, we can create a better tomorrow for our
future generation.