What Do Students Need Now? Love and Care.

By Sujina Shakya, Teach For Nepal alumna

Throughout the past two years we’ve seen firsthand the unprecedented upheaval in education systems around the world. Educators and policy makers everywhere are debating what we should focus on now to ensure that this disruption does not create a lifelong burden for this generation. We put out a call to our network to seek insights from educators on this question. This essay was submitted in response to the question “What do students need now?”

It’s been two years, and the world has not been the same as it was before March 2020. I still remember how we were told to pack up overnight after the graduation of Teach For Nepal Fellows from the Learning Institute of 2020. And since that day, nothing has returned to what it was.

With schools closed, students had much more time to play and wander around the house. As the lockdown persisted the students were on social media to connect with their teachers, and so, though I had not been directly teaching in the classroom, I started to get many friend requests on Facebook from my past students. It had been three years since completing my Fellowship, and I had never received so many calls and messages. At first, it was a joy to reconnect with these students, but as the days passed, my heart pounded in fear whenever I received a message.

As I continued talking to them, I realized they were lost and seeking help. The conversations in these well-being checks became, “Miss I don’t know what to do now and I feel so unlucky.” They shared that they had no idea what to do staying at home. They hadn’t met friends for so long. Some were complaining about how the school assignments they got through phone calls and messages were not making much sense. They were being yelled at at home, and compelled to do household chores beyond their interest and capacity. And they had few opportunities to even hold a book.

This was not just the case for my students, this was the case for so many students in rural contexts beyond the reach of the internet and electricity on a daily basis. Today’s students are full of the turmoil of what their next day will look like. Exams being canceled when they were all set to enter exam halls, months of waiting for the so-called adults to make decisions on their grades, being discriminated against on their results based on their race, religion, and gender. They were losing hope for the future and losing interest in what we refer to as education. This made me realize that we have made education a dependent thing that cannot function without a school building, classrooms, and, especially, teachers.

As my conversations with my students grew longer, they recalled our classes and how they loved talking, playing, and being joyful in school. I came to understand that all they needed at the moment was someone to listen to them without judgment or fear. They were in great need of socialization, but with the extra effort of love and care. And they needed support to help them hold on to their belief in hard work and help them to regain their perseverance.

My visits to schools this year have been different. I have never seen these kids so shy and still, with big eyes looking curiously at me as if I am someone whom they have never seen before. For some, masks had been an easy way to escape their identity, their fear, and the sad faces that they carry from their homes. For others, masks had been the way to mask up everything they had in them. And for still others, masks had been a burden of another unaffordable thing added to the list.

What do students need now? What these lovely students need are smiles that can be reflected in their eyes, and voices that will carry beyond their three-layered masks and speak justice. They need an abundance of love and faith to enable them to believe that this is not their fate. And they need powerful voices to let them know that whatever they’re feeling right now is ok, and we all are with them.