Humaira Junaid
A whole staff. Taken online.
Leading a whole staff into distance learning.
- Now
- Section coordinator
- Joined
- Her school in February 2019
- Programme
- PgCTL, taken as the school moved to distance learning
- Shared
- Passed on what she learnt to her teachers every week
As a section coordinator through the closures, Humaira could not answer her own questions about running lessons online. PgCTL gave her the tools, breakout rooms, virtual workstations, exit slips, which she passed to her staff weekly, and the school's evaluation came back with no weak judgements.
An inspection report, first.
Humaira Junaid joined her school in February 2019. “The first document that was handed over to me was the inspection report of the same year,” she says. The school had been rated acceptable, with many areas to work on, and the prospect excited her. “I was thrilled,” she says. Then every school was advised to adopt a distance learning programme. “OK, but how?” she says. “I felt massive load as a leader.” Her questions: “How to conduct a lesson? How to make students collaborate? How to differentiate?”
Breakout rooms and exit slips.
She enrolled in PgCTL, “and that is where the roller coaster ride began”. She learnt from the theoretical content and also from the way the sessions themselves were conducted, which she calls “an immense learning experience”. Each of her questions got a practical answer. Students could still collaborate, in breakout rooms. Differentiation could happen through virtual workstations, with groups made by learning style. An exit slip could tell her how a lesson had gone. A science investigation could run on simulations and virtual labs.
She did not keep it to herself. “Every week I would collaborate with my teachers and would pass on whatever I was learning at Suraasa,” she says. Things started running smoothly.
I thank my lucky stars that I joined Suraasa and enrolled myself into PgCTL programme.
Wellbeing before marks.
“But soon we realised the challenge was much bigger than we thought,” she says. Students were shut in at home with no physical activity, and parents were losing their jobs. “Academic progress was becoming the secondary concern. Our primary concern was our students’ well-being.” So the staff changed direction. “Lectures turned into virtual talks,” she says. “Feelings were expressed through poetry, healthy eating was taught through cooking activities.” Students started responding. Parents were fully involved, she says, and the school began receiving videos that showed it.
The school’s distance learning evaluation, she says, came back with no weaknesses. She closes by thanking her principal, her team, and her students and their parents “for embracing this new normal”.
