JAMMU: A webinar for spreading awareness about the Covid SoPs and guidelines for re-opening of schools in the winter zone of Jammu was organised by Directorate of School Education Jammu, in collaboration with UNICEF.
The webinar cum panel discussion aimed at creating awareness about different SOPs and guidelines to be followed in the schools for the safety of the students, staff members and all the other concerned stakeholders.
Director School Education Jammu, Anuradha Gupta, in her message to the students, staff and officials of the Directorate, emphasised on safeguarding the future of the students by imparting them uninterrupted education. She asked the teachers and concerned officials to devise a mechanism to come out with a roster to meet the requirements of the students and ensure that they make the best use of the opportunities available to them.
Danish Aziz, Education Specialist; Dr. Sheikh Saleem UNICEF Health Consultant; Mehran Khan (CEO) ELFA International were the key resource persons and R.S.Slathia Principal HSS Tikri, Imtiaz Naseem Hashmi, Principal HSS Salwan; Upinder Kumar, Headmaster HS Janglote and 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 drew the attention of the participants towards 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 the 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 the 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, while Dr. Surinder Sharma, Counsellor, Shanti Saroop Sharma, Preeti Sharma and Manan Mahajan, Team Members of Counselling Cell DSEJ contributed in its smooth conduct.