Nobody expected on Monday that Typhoon Quinta would be a super storm with winds clocking at 170 kilometers per hour. The weather agency had forecast it would only have, at best, sustained winds of 100 kph. I am not sure if it was a forecasting error or the typhoon just suddenly intensified, but what happened as a result was something that would usually occur before the Covid-19 pandemic: classes were suspended.
Initially, I was chuckling in disbelief: how could local government units (LGUs) or the Department of Education suspend classes at a time when we have supposedly shifted to teaching and learning online? Then I realized that the shift was not really 100 percent, as the department included manual processes and interventions for areas with little to no internet connectivity. It introduced the concept of modules, where teachers had to physically bring stacks of papers to villages for their students to fill out and later come back for and check them for grading purposes.