Sharing the story of teachers’ teaching during the pandemic, Mr. Huynh Thanh Phu, Principal of Nguyen Du High School (District 10, Ho Chi Minh City) said that a teacher had to drive 17 km from home to school to teach off (directly). ) period 1, period 2, 3 open the laptop to teach on (online), period 4 teaches off and period 5 turns on the machine to teach online.

Some days, teachers only go to school to teach 1 period off, the rest is on. Teachers have to “turn like a pinwheel”, changing the state at an unprecedented speed in the history of teaching. Many days, teachers are constantly looking for rooms with strong enough wifi to best communicate to F0 and F1 students who are isolated at home.

A funny situation was told by Mr. Phu: There was a teacher who came to school with the hope of teaching all 5 off periods, but when he entered the class, he found it empty, only 14 students left. I just found out that there is 1 F0, but there are 20 students who self-identify as F1.

“The class president said that these 20 F1s invite each other to rest, but no one has been in close contact with F0 friends. In the evening, the teacher has to teach online for 21 children who are isolated at home.” Mr. Phu said.

What if the teacher also has COVID-19? Mr. Phu said that at that time, teaching and learning still took place, just a little bit out of the ordinary. For example, Ms. Dao has F0, has mild fever symptoms, has to stay at home to isolate for treatment but still teaches online for the whole class at school. Teacher Dao still does a series of experiments on the element aluminum for the whole class 12A3 in an online form.

Ms. Loan, who teaches Literature, has COVID-19 with many symptoms. To ensure the students’ learning, she put out two parity questions on the screen, the whole class 12A18 worked for 2 periods, and then each student took a picture of their work and sent it to her via Zalo. During the 7 days of isolation, she graded and carefully approved each lesson.

The situation is similar at Bui Thi Xuan High School (District 1). Principal Vu Thi Ngoc Dung said that teachers in the school are always ready to switch from face-to-face to online teaching at any time. They teach in class but always bring laptops, waiting for quick test announcements sent by students’ families.

At 6pm every day, the homeroom teacher reports to the vice principal in charge of capturing information F0, F1 of each class. Then, the vice-principal informed all the teachers that the next day there was an online class and a face-to-face class so that everyone could be more active. However, there is always an unexpected situation that happens, if there are too few students in the class, then the whole class has to be online, the teacher has to “turn” right away.

Be patient so that students can learn directly

Ms. Vu Thi Ngoc Dung confided: “In-person learning is always better than online, but with too few students in class, teaching is not effective, disadvantaged children at home, so they have to switch to online learning.” Principal of Bui Thi Xuan High School said that at this school, there are still more face-to-face classes, but if it is a situation where F0 is high and students in class are few, teachers must accept online teaching. They must be very flexible, preparing everything to turn off or on according to the F0, F1 situation of the class.

“But teachers are still happy because they are still teaching, but remembering the period of social distancing, the city locked down at home for several months, the teachers were so sad. It’s a bit extreme, but it has to be endured because everyone understands that is the general situation, but still trying to teach is still trying, but the whole first semester of online learning, the efficiency is not high. Try your best, no matter how hard you try, let the students learn directly“, Ms. Dung shared.

That is also the point of view of Mr. Huynh Thanh Phu. Because the epidemic is still complicated, the number of F0 in the school tends to increase, Nguyen Du High School always organizes face-to-face and online teaching in parallel. “However, we try our best to make the most of face-to-face learning, only switching to online learning when it is difficult to ensure the amount of knowledge for the students. After all, face-to-face learning is highly effective, online learning cannot be equal.” Mr. Phu said.