Certainly, the whole situation we are facing is difficult and abnormal for everybody, especially for students. Online learning is a challenge in itself for both students and teachers, as first and foremost they face technical difficulties, but more importantly they lack motivation and concentration. What constitutes the real challenge remains Social Distancing which changes the reality of our daily life. Stress levels are constantly increasing, not only due to concerns about health issues, but also as a result of accepting the new and unexpected reality of staying at home for a long time. Children find it difficult to significantly change their routine (e.g., closing of schools and childcare facilities, social distancing, home isolation), which can impair their sense of structure, predictability, and security.

I think that the key success in this newly created situation has been the close cooperation between each other, namely between teachers-students-parents-school psychologists. What we as a school have done during this time is to maintain daily communication with our students, mainly between the principal teacher and the student, online lessons and daily routines we would normally follow to develop the learning process.

Parents and students have been advised by school psychologists through various guidelines on how to maintain a routine during this period, how to manage stress and anxiety, the activities we can do and rules for better hygiene.

Psychologists also offer counseling to students or parents either: directly (i.e. students communicate with the school psychologist) or anonymously (students who wish to remain anonymous, can contact another psychologist). Careful implementation of all guidelines of the Ministry of Education has helped interaction with students.

“Wash your hands frequently” – an awareness-raising project on good hygiene by the primary school “Fan Noli”

Since 10 March 2020, we have been isolated at home and have started online learning through various online mediums. From the beginning, I had to make students aware that the lessons would still continue, which was not easy. I have understood that during face-to-face classes, some of the methods I used to “pressure” students such as grades or absences have now “lost” their function and power. I realised I should have made more effort previously so that students could really understand that they need schools. Yesterday’s formal education is more evident today through online classes. Many students were only concerned when the exam period came, rather than with what I prepared each day. This difficulty arose also because of our mismanagement of the situation. I soon realised that Whatsapp communication was useless and unmanageable. This brought another challenge: the development of classes using technological tools. The materials were not difficult for me personally to find, as I already had them in electronic format because of my experience as an author of textbooks, which meant I had enough resources, but it took a lot of effort to translate them into a format that students could understand, as I had to juggle between different technologies.

I started to research and found programmes like Screen recording, Classroom, Zoom, etc, which I didn’t know about beforehand. Since then I have used extensively Classroom. I am sorry that I only learned about it now because I see it is very effective.

At this stage, thanks to the existence of online networks, I think that all schools have been following the same innovations. Everyone already uses Classroom, Power point videos, Zoom or Google form tests from Google classroom. I am the leader of the professional network “the Teacher Network for Albanian language and literature”. The network teachers and I have worked to set up lesson models to help other teachers. This initiative is organised by the Education Office in Elbasan. We prepare the lessons for the following week and distribute them through Youtube or from our drive as a link so as not to overload people’s phones. In my opinion, it is a very good initiative to help those teachers who find it impossible to use sophisticated technological tools.

Lessons carried out on Google Classroom and Zoom by the secondary school “Kostandin Kristoforidhi” Elbasan