Friday, March 6, 2020. Before dismissing my students, I reminded them of the Transfer Task that they were supposed to submit the following Monday. I also met the students who would take part in the beautiful program that we had prepared for the celebration of the feast of St. Marie Eugenie,1 our school’s saint-foundress

Unexpectedly, classes were suspended the following week. The teachers being in school, planned on how to keep the school sanitized and safe from the virus so that when our students come back, they would be safe.

But there was no coming back. The Philippine government placed the entire Luzon island under Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) starting March 16, 2020. Together with the imposition of the ECQ, Learning from Home (LFH) was also enforced on teachers and students.

On the first week of class suspension, the students received the news well, as they were unexpected rest days for them. But when they realized that their school year has been cut short, they were disheartened! We were still halfway through the second semester and they were looking forward and preparing for a lot of events – sports and academic competitions, field trips, retreat, community immersion, their batch celebration, and many more! They were away from friends, they could not go out, all their previous plans had been cancelled. They had to undergo a lot of cutting, losing, and detachment.

I also had my own share of losing. My PowerPoint presentations and assessments were ready. My lessons and activities were just waiting to be executed. But all of these had to be ditched and changed to lessons and activities that could be done online.

I did not sleep well for some time, thinking how I would teach my material online. I may be respected as one of the best classroom teachers, but I have never ever taught online. However, I needed to dive into this new reality… if only to continue my students’ learning and help them get through the school year.

It was a 180-degree shift in my way of doing and thinking! Aside from figuring out ways to effectively deliver my lessons, I needed to think of creative outputs that would assess the students’ learning because it’s difficult to keep academic integrity with online objective assessments.

And then, it slowly dawned on me… if an adult like me could be disconcerted because of the uncertainties and fear brought about by the pandemic, how much more challenging it would be for my young students? I felt I needed to support the well-being of my students. So, my priority changed from merely designing lessons
to also helping my students come into terms with their emotions and redirect their experiences so that it could be transformed into a faith experience.

In school, we have the morning talk wherein we read and reflect on the Gospel of the day before beginning classes. I thought
of continuing this habit. I prepared the Gospel reflections connecting them to the current situations – whether it was about the government officials, the sacrifices of the frontliners, the poor who are starving, or the Church’s opening its doors to street dwellers. I posted these reflections on their Facebook group page every morning. I also shared messages of Pope Francis and other inspirational quotes. Some students regularly read and reacted to the posts. The Facebook group page became a “sacred space” for them to turn to when they needed peace or when they were anxious.

My first LFH topic was Buddhism. So, apart from the facts that the students needed to learn about Buddhism, I built on the practice of Christian Meditation that the students are already doing in school. Each day, I posted 5-minute peace meditations on our learning platform that the students needed to practice before proceeding to the task to be done for the day. For their final output on Buddhism, the students had to make a 4 to 6-minute audio meditation using their own calming voice. Through this activity, my students experienced that even amid uncertainties, one can be at peace.

We were in the middle of the Lenten season then. The students were undergoing different situations at home – some had relatives who were infected by the virus, some have parents who are frontliners, one has to do the marketing because both parents are senior citizens. Their situation is as varied as their number. So, my co-teachers and I wanted to guide them to view their experiences with the eyes of faith. We gave them an activity entitled “Be Jesus 3.0.” The idea is for them to grow as another Jesus for the people around them. We gave them weekly reflection questions on living out the school’s values particularly joyful detachment and on practicing prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. For Holy Week, we asked them to relate their personal experiences to the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It was rewarding to read how the “COVID-19 Pandemic” was transformed into a “Kindness Pandemic” among the students’ sphere of influence!

We also asked the students to make a creative calendar where they can write the acts of kindness that they do at home in their families, to the frontliners, or to the most vulnerable people during this pandemic. This helped them not to confine themselves to their own problems and miseries but go out of themselves. It was awesome how they experienced Jesus “walk” our city streets in these trying times. One said, “Wherever Jesus goes, miracles happen… and we witness a lot of miracles happening right now.”
One student shared that their family never prayed the rosary together.

But two of her grandparents were confined in the hospital. They were worried especially because they could not visit them. Besides, her mother is a frontliner and her father is the one who always goes out to procure for their family’s needs. With all these worries and anxieties, the family started praying the rosary together and attend online Masses. When the grandparents finally came home safe, their family donated Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to a hospital in Batangas and some money to a local government unit.

Because of the ECQ, some of our students were not able to do their community immersion. So, we had to design one online. It was funny and seemed impossible because no one could go out. But, there are many stories of the frontliners on TV and online. So, we came up with the idea of making them research on a day in the life of the frontliners, reflect on them, and respond with concrete actions. With this, the students actively got involved with what was happening in the outside world in the confines of their homes.

Some designed infographics for institutions, gave up their stock of hygienic tools at home for some soldiers, talked to and gave tips to delivery personnel, cooked lunch and snacks for security guards, got involved with organizations that provided PPEs to hospitals and made thank you cards that were placed on food packs distributed to medical personnel in various hospitals. Then recognizing the plight of the farmers and knowing that they are the country’s food producers, the batch raised funds to help farmers in Tiaong, Quezon. I am truly grateful that this pandemic is forming all of us to be better persons!

The challenge is not yet over. Word has it that COVID-19 is here to stay until a vaccine is developed. So, the challenge of online learning and teaching is still on the table. I am exploring more online classes and the right strategies for online teaching. I must admit that I’m still scared of this “uncharted territory.” But, I go through this adventure, sustained by my faith in Jesus who remains with me and my students and who meets us where we are…

In the face of this challenge, my heart echoes the words of St. Marie Eugenie, our school’s saint-foundress: “Love never says: I have done enough.”

Janet Argana

1 St. Marie-Eugénie de Jésus (1817-1898), a French Catholic religious and the foundress of the Religious of the Assumption