Snapshot - July '21 (Covid-19 edition)
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE PAST FEW MONTHS
We had begun ‘offline’ classes in March at the end of the last academic year but were unable to keep that going in the new academic year (that started in June) due to another Covid-19 shutdown. So, we are back to our online classes with both school and college students, just thankful for the grace we’ve been receiving during this period.
School Programme
The schools were on a break during the month of May. We had earlier made an assessment of our children in terms of knowledge retention across the last year of online classes and found that their standards had dropped due to multiple reasons. Therefore, we decided to use the holiday period to brush up on their Math and English. For the students of 11th and 12th - all of whom are in the Commerce stream - we started Zoom classes well before their academic year began.
12th std. results - Vinoth (Science) got 73% and Samuel (Commerce) got 78%. Vinoth wants to pursue a Medical Lab Tech program while Samuel wants to do Bachelors in Computer Applications.
DISCOVERY classes
Games and activity were a big part of interaction with the smaller kids to help them discover values & morals. For the 11th and 12th teens we had to level it up a notch to connect with them better. We used a video series which is sequenced to enable young minds to think and discuss the bigger questions like purpose, who is God and why God.
Career Guidance: We had an external provider conduct Psychometric Tests for both of our 12th std. students to help them find their interest areas; it was narrowed down to Health Sciences for Vinoth and Computer Science for Samuel.
Summer Activity: To engage our school kids stuck indoors and missing out on extracurricular activity, we had an artist volunteer to take art class for some of our interested children.
The students of class 8 were asked to use their imagination and any accessible items to create artwork. Below are some of their creations, using coconut shells, cardboard, craft paper etc.
College Programme
For one of our Sunday sessions in June, we had our former Eternus teammate, Mrs Hepziba, joining us live from Asbury, USA (where she’s doing her Ph.D) to talk to the students. We also had Adv. Anita Thomas (wife of our Managing Trustee and High Court lawyer) speak to us about the laws on sexual harassment.
We conducted our own EGT (Eternus Got Talent) in which our students presented their talents in dance, singing and cooking. We conducted sessions on Video editing and did personality training sessions, as well.
Our freshly minted graduates
Jayalakshmi V.,
B.Com graduate from Ethiraj has cleared Aptitude and Telephonic Interview with McKinsey & Co. We had organized an HR consultant to help her put final touches on her interview skills.
Mohan Kumar, B.A (Economics) this year and was looking to pursue PG. He has now decided to study for the Group 1 exams of the TN Public Service Commission exam. He has joined the Shankar IAS Academy, Anna Nagar, to do his 10 month coaching, with our support.
Balaji M. graduated in Electronics Engineering from Venkateswara College and got campus selection to NOVAC, software firm in Chennai. He has currently started his training there.
Virtual house visit 2021
The Annual House Visits was done though phone calls. We filled up Google form questionnaires as we discussed matters with the families. Our data shows a considerable decline in economic, social relationships within families compared to last year. However, most families felt that their children had become more responsible post pandemic as they help parents with household chores now.
World Vision Workshop
Worldvision conducted a Webinar on ‘School Education in a pandemic: Equity Issues & Solutions’ on 28th of May, in which the Eternus team participated. Among the many issues they highlighted was how children have forgotten the foundations/ basics of their subjects. This helped augment our findings about how our children were doing, as a result of which we chose to reinforce the basics of English and Math during the school break.
Covid Relief
Last month with the help of Swiss India, an NGO who funds causes, we were able to provide relief materials to 34 families at the end of the lockdown in May. We distributed kits of provisions to 24 families in the Purasawakkam area and 10 to families in Tondiarpet.
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