Winning essay within the global campaign “Protect Our Education”, developed by Save the Children.

To think that a molecule can make it difficult to block the whole world is really a terrible thought, let this thought be a reality as it happened in March last year since the beginning of the pandemic isolating the whole world and leaving great consequences. This year was very challenging for all of us, where a great challenge was also in the field of education. This challenge was quite difficult, for schools, teachers, children and parents, who had to adapt to the new method of teaching and learning in the conditions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the austerity measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19, in our favor was the passage of learning virtually but that in our country the conditions to develop learning in this way were quite poor and many children were at risk of being left behind. dore. Where the most difficult was for the children who for the first time will attend classes. The dream they had created of how they would get to know other students and teachers remained to meet virtually. There were difficulties in explaining some lessons as well as in completing some tasks, until we got used to that approach for us it was quite problematic. The lesson was broadcast virtually with video lectures on the Public Radio Television of Kosovo (RTK). In this regard, in addition to the broadcast videos, teachers also used various electronic platforms such as ZOOM, Skype, Google Meet, and Google Classroom, to share homework and other teaching materials, and tried to do the lessons with clear. Explaining some subjects was more difficult to understand, as examples of this were mathematics, physics, chemistry. Where to understand a task with formulas it was necessary to repeat several times. Starting from various reasons that despite the great desire we had to continue teaching in school benches, the circumstances made it impossible as well as impossible to be active in every hour that took place.

Lack of electricity, connection through the online platform that was sometimes problematic, such as poor internet, technical problems and in some even the lack of equipment. Where we expected the Ministry of Education, Science, Technology and Innovation (MEST) to solve some of these problems. Despite the teachers’ engagements with us students, the approach to understanding was more difficult than being present in schools. But online learning also had some benefits where it made us learn how to conduct various activities through computer programs that made the class even more attractive. Not forgetting the other difficulties, where sometimes there was not enough time to fully develop a unit of our activities and questions, or even automatic removal from the program at some point that caused a problem to log in again. All the above-mentioned challenges as a result of the pandemic result in student learning loss, which will have long-term impacts on the education and future of children. Learning loss means the loss of knowledge and skills or stagnation of students that may be as a result of interruption of school for various reasons, including: summer vacations, temporary dropout, multiple absences, and ineffective teaching. From the beginning of the pandemic it was known that there would be learning losses, because distance learning without proper preparation could not replace the habit process, despite what we had gone through a break with the hope that we would return to normalcy, but seeing that it was impossible we started to develop the lesson with some programs that the Ministry of Education had chosen to keep.

The best part of all this was going back to the school benches, where we met with friends and teachers, always respecting the rules for protection from Covid-19 which had now become routine as well as wearing masks regularly. , disinfection and hand washing as well as distance between each other. Where we talked a lot together, part of the time we also talked about the problems we had encountered while learning online.