Virtual School for Contact Center Kids
The Contact Center has been also shut down over the past several months, but BSF staff are working to begin virtual schooling and minimize the effects of learning loss and ensure that our children continue to grow intellectually, socially, and emotionally even when they cannot attend their school in-person. We stay connected with our children through their parents via social media, phone calls, and messaging apps. Our kids come from highly disadvantaged families, and most don’t have broadband connection available at home. Many children also don’t have access to television at their homes and they cannot even watch educational programs on television that the government is trying to promote.
Working one-on-one with a Contact Center student
Children whose family live near the Contact Center can for in-person lessons, too, which are conducted in careful accordance safety precautions and office protocols. To limit exposure risk, a maximum of 2 children come in at a time for a less than 20 minute lesson. In addition, we are also conducting phone classes for the children in their villages. BSF teachers and staff call students twice a week to guide them through their studies and give them homework. Parents can send teachers photos of their children’s homework if the kids encounter questions or issues, and teachers also review homework with the students in their phone meetings. We also provide our children with books, toys, paper, and pencils so that they can learn, write, sketch, play, and stay constructively and happily engaged — even at home.
A socially distanced lesson at the Contact Center
However, when parents are at work, it is very difficult for children to ask questions. They just cannot learn virtually in the same way as in the classroom. Contact Center teacher Mina Tamang summarized the barriers to learning that students as three main problems:
The students cannot readily ask what they haven’t understood unlike during face-to-face classroom interactions;
They cannot make calls to teachers at the time they want to; and,
They cannot learn the same way they could learn in the classroom with their friends.
Contact Center kids with BSF staff
Many families are also facing food shortages at home, and the Contact Center children are missing the nutritious meals normally provided for them at the Contact Center every day. BSF staff have continued handing out food and emergency relief during the lockdown to the hardest-hit families.
Leena Satyal (second from the left) with BSF staff
We are facing a lot of challenges at the moments, but both BSF staff and students are coping with it with some success. We are learning to live in this lockdown and virtual learning environment, and we are trying our best to prevent learning loss among our eager little children.
— Rachana Rajbhandari, Contact Center Program Coordinator
Rachana and BSF staff and teachers