Qamishli – North-Press Agency
Zana al-Ali
Since March 14th, the closure of schools in the city of Qamishli in northeastern Syria to avoid the spread of the coronavirus epidemic prompted teachers at the Almaza Khalil School in the city center to launch an initiative to teach students through special groups on the application WhatsApp to complete the educational process.
"After the schools closed, we created groups on WhatsApp for all school grades," said Berivan Ibrahim, an administrator at the school.
The number of students in the Almaza Khalil School in the al-Arbawiya neighborhood in Qamishli during the current school year reached 105 students, and 23 male and female teachers, according to Ibrahim, who raises three children in addition to communicating with her students who were cut off from school.
In her home in the al-Bisheriya neighborhood, 13-year-old Viyan Muhammad, a student in the same school, reviews some of her lessons while sitting with her parents and four sisters. “Receiving the lesson via WhatsApp is not the same as in school, because in school we see our teachers and understand more,” she says.
"I was reviewing my lessons in preparation for the first monthly exam in the second semester, but my school was closed," says Viyan.
The teachers of the Almaza Khalil School see that communication with students and their families keeps them close to their books, noting that they were communicating with the students even before the lockdown on the phone via WhatsApp groups.
In a move considered by some as advanced, groups from the Education Board in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria began, two weeks ago, to organize the lessons of the educational curriculum and video-filming them, targeting students who have been cut off from their educational process due to the imposed quarantine, as a preventative measure against coronavirus, and these lessons will be broadcast on local TV channels in the coming days.