Indian Journal of Educational Technology
Volume 2 No. 2, July 2020

152

Communication

Social and Emotional Well-being Amidst COVID
Vineeta Garg* and Gunjan Tomar **

*HOD Computer Science, SRDAV Public School, Delhi
** Activities Coordinator,   Learning Support and SEL facilitator @DPSI Edge, Gurgaon

Corresponding author: Vineeta Garg, Email:

With the announcement of country 
lockdown by our prime minister 
on March 18, 2020, the nation’s 
activities came to a sudden halt. With 
no preparation time to combat the 
situation the teachers were struggling to 
impart lessons using online platforms. 
Addressing social-emotional needs 
remotely seemed to be a distant goal for 
all. All these challenges made us reflect 
to devise a plan to address learning 
by incorporating the social-emotional 
component and making classrooms 
happy, inclusive and accessible for all. 

The sudden, forced adoption of 
remote learning affected the well-
being of teachers and students alike. 
We created a Wellness mantras series 
which contains six posters comprising 
of simple doable tips to keep oneself 
motivated.

#1 Are you digitally smart
#2 Are you emotionally smart
#3 Are you physical active
#4 Is your social connect empathetic
#5 Are we practicing occupational 
wellness routine
#6 Are we socially responsible

L i n k : h t t p s : / / w a k e l e t . c o m / w a k e /
eAtVFtbJIAbn6Gz8MoYih

Wellness mantras empowered teachers 
and students to believe that they have 
the ability to contribute to each other’s 

wellbeing by staying motivated. They 
shared their stories on various aspects 
of wellness. Their stories included 
a tiny contribution of calling their 
grandparents regularly to know their 
wellbeing, to help their friends stay fit 
by conducting collective online fitness 
sessions and learning simple DIYs using 
online platform. Teachers shared their 
stories about how they are helping 
their peers in e-content development 
or using the online teaching platform 
effectively by incorporating the concept 
of train the trainer.

Remote learning times are challenging 
times for students with diverse needs 
in the classrooms. We created a video 
series “Addressing Diverse Need in 
Remote Learning Times” comprising of 
three videos to address their learning as 
well as social-emotional needs. 

Our first video encompasses resources 
related to addressing challenges of 
Reading, Writing and Math, Executive 
Functions and Speech, Language 
and Communication challenges: 
Link: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=9bNYmz9Sn4c

Our second video addresses the 
Hearing, Mobility and Vision challenges 
of the students which comprised of 
various tools needed to accelerate the 
learning of students. Link: https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=N3AcACXhIHk



Indian Journal of Educational Technology
Volume 2 No. 2, July 2020

153

Not every disability is visible!!! Variety of 
Tools needed to enhance the learning 
of students with Neurodiversity, 
Multiply Impaired/Medically Fragile and 
challenges related to Mental Health 
were collated in the form of a video to 
address their needs: Link: https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=CJO9MmfwhpM 

These videos were shared with the 
larger community. This helped teachers 
to use free online tools to address 
students’ needs in a remote learning 
environment and for the parents to help 
their children in their learning at home. 
This also empowered students to access 
the content and personalise it according 
to their needs to stay at the pace of 
the online learning class. More than 
1000 views of these videos collectively 
explains the impact and usefulness of 
this free resource in online classrooms.

Considering how Life skills classes were 
impacted during pandemic due to the 
lack of resources for online delivery of 
these skills we have launched e-content 
of life skills. The content is made in the 
form of comic strip and supports audio, 
visual and text learning to address 
needs of the students and is aligned to 
CBSE Life skills syllabus. 

Teachers had started using this 
e-content within a day of release of this. 
They found this content quite useful to 
address why life skills are important in 
remote learning classrooms. We had 
more than 447 views of our video in just 
2 days. We received phone calls from 
teachers about how this e-content is 
proving beneficial in online classroom. 
We have received calls from the 
students and their parents that they like 
the character of Super Granny and were 

able to reflect on the importance of life 
skills in their life. Link: https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=Cakjos78UCk

To benefit the larger community all the 
resources created were shared via social 
media on the forums for educators and 
students.