Work From Home

“I thought you are not going to work today. Why are you dressed to go out?”

I laugh at the confusion on my only offspring’s face and explain to him that I was following the protocol of working from home as the need to use collaborative platforms makes appropriate dress code expedient. With social distancing being followed religiously in every part of the world, people belonging to different professional circles and walks of life are staying connected more than ever before while maintaining the physical distance. Authoritarians and leaders have systems in place to monitor their staff and clients and people are investing more effort through online platforms than they usually do with additional time being spent on preparation of materials to share online.

My initial misgivings about functioning effectively as a Teacher Librarian from home evaporated into thinness as I used the knowledge gained from my training to use https://www.scisdata.com/ to add websites and digital videos to the school library catalogue. I had no hassles in playing the part of role as a curriculum leader by uploading teaching and learning activities and resources on shared platforms like Microsoft Teams which provided me the opportunity to create a shared library and invite people through emails, links and codes. For some unexplained reason, you feel guilty about staying at home and not going to the institution to work and hence feel compelled to use every minute productively. I mixed the activities with a few professional development courses that I had to attend to further develop my understanding of different policy guidelines and teaching platforms.

Shared workspace is gaining prominence in this Information Age to such an extent that during unpredictable situations people realize more and more how significant it is to be information literate. Besides, one cannot complain about being able to wake up an hour or an hour and a half later than usual to start working as the travel time to workplace can be conveniently overlooked. Although there is much speculation about the second wave of Corus attack, communities and societies are united in one cause which is sticking it to the man.