The challenges are many. “I thought a Zoom class quite impossible,” says third grade 3 teacher Sabina Yasmeen, who lost whatever confidence she had in her IT skills after trying Zoom for the first time. “Every single day was a challenge for me. I was learning like a toddler.”

Not just teachers struggled with the technology. Students and parents had to learn new skills too. “Some of the parents told us that they don’t have a laptop and printer and some of them are simply not tech savvy,” said Sabina Yesmin, a kindergarten-1 teacher.

“Each day I found a solution to the previous day’s problem,” says Ms. Yasmeen. Even when she got used to the technicalities of an online classroom, not being physically present in front of her students presented more challenges. How should she teach trigonometry over Zoom? A self-prepared video and a careful explanation meant that by the end of class her students had all learned how to draw and measure angles. “My spare whiteboard worked as a treasure for me,” she says.

Teachers are keenly aware of the diversity in human beings because they observe daily how students learn differently. Yet Ms. Yasmeen, like other teachers, was surprised when some students who were average performers in the traditional classroom were learning better online. “Perhaps it is because they are in a more comfortable setting, at home,” said Afrin Shahid, a kindergarten-2 teacher.

The comfort of being home, though, raised another challenge: Parents who want their child to get all the answers right. “They keep prompting them rather than letting them learn for themselves,” said nursery teacher Salma Jahan.