In the interiors of Odisha, 48-year-old Jayanti Sahoo is leveraging WhatsApp to stay on top of the syllabus for her Class 5 English class—and devising methods to assist those who don't have access to the internet, too
English teacher Jayanti Sahoo, standing infornt of blackboard inside an empty classroom in a rural school.
It takes a while for the morning chaos to settle, after the children in the joint family home, ranging from 3 to 10 years of age, are fed breakfast. Around 9 am, 48-year-old Jayanti Sahoo retires to her room to prepare notes, to be sent via WhatsApp to her students. Odisha, where Sahoo is from, was one of the first states to implement a complete lockdown, after Kerala. This meant that state teachers, especially those from government schools, had no example to follow. They had to become the example.
Sahoo’s day begins at 5.30 am; living in a home with five families under a single roof, much of her morning routine is devoted to cooking breakfast and lunch, along with performing the daily puja.
Sahoo is the only woman from the extended family to have a job. She began her teaching career more than 15 years ago at a school in the village of Raghunathpur, in Odisha. Soon after the lockdown was announced, Sahoo and her collegues received a notice about conducting classes online, from the school’s headquarters in Bhubaneswar.
A Class 5 English teacher at an Odia medium school, she settles in after the morning chores are done with, with her own 'homework'. She starts by sending pictures of pages of the latest textbook, since many students have not received theirs during the lockdown.
“I have made WhatsApp groups for different sections of students in Class 5. I prepare the notes a day ahead to send the students, and click pictures of any reading exercises from the textbook to send them too,” she explains.