Jammu: Schools in the winter zone of Jammu are to open up with completion of winter vacations at the end of February 202, after an year long forced closure due to COVID-19 pandemic. To ensure smooth opening up and continuance of physical classwork in schools, Directorate of School Education Jammu, with the help of UNICEF, organised a webinar cum panel discussion on ‘Reopening of schools in winter zone of Jammu Division’ with the aim of creating awareness about different SOPs and guidelines to be followed in the schools for the safety of the students, staff memebers and all the other concerned stakeholders.
Ms. Anuradha Gupta , Director School Education Jammu, in her message to the students, staff and officials of the Directorate, emphasing on safeguarding the future of the students by imparting them uninterrupted education, asked the teachers and concerned officials to devise a mechanism to come out with a roster to fulfil the requirement of the students and ensure that the students make the best use of the opportunities available to them.
Mr. Danish Aziz, Education Specialist; Dr. Sheikh Saleem UNICEF Health Consultant; Mr. Mehran Khan (CEO) ELFA International were the key resource persons and Mr. R.S.Slathia Principal HSS Tikri, Mr. Imtiaz Naseem Hashmi Principal HSS Salwan; Mr. Upinder Kumar Headmaster HS Janglote and Ms. Anchal Kour (Master) MS Railway Station were the chief panelists for the event that was attended by more than 5700 participants live on Facebook and followed by thousands of students on various other social media platforms.
Danish Aziz focussed the attention of the participants on the different guidelines to be followed in schools and discussed the monitoring mechanism while Dr. Sheikh Saleem highlighted the activities to be performed on the reopening of the schools. He said that teachers must promote and ensure compliance of hand hygiene among children and staff members and they must lead by example. Personal hygiene and sanitation, food hygiene, respiratory hygiene and activity based hand washing must be considered in the schools.
Mehran khan discussed about Covid safe schools. He stressed upon display of Covid IEC material, safe Saturday wagon wheel, peer to peer learning of students, hazard mapping of schools, weekly 40 minutes discussions on issues affecting children including wash, DRR, Covid, etc.
In the panel discussion, R.S.Slathia Imtiaz Hashmi and Anchal Kour, shared their experiences on reopening of schools in summer zone of Jammu Division- problems faced and devised solutions. They also satisfied the queries raised by the participants.
Romesh Sharma Head, Counselling Cell DSEJ stressed upon ensuring well-being and sound mental health of the students. He said that faculty counsellors in schools must cater to that.
The proceedings of the webinar were conducted by Dr. Alka Sharma whereas Dr. Surinder Sharma, Counsellor Shanti Saroop Sharma, Preeti Sharma and Manan Mahajan, Team Members of Counselling Cell DSEJ contributed in its smooth conduct.
