Early education: What to expect for post-pandemic generation
Published on: Sunday, January 31, 2021
By: Audrey J Ansibin
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Screenshot of an online class for young learners held via Zoom.
FOR parents with children, the pandemic can be a blessing in disguise. With remote working being the choice of most companies to flatten the Covid-19 curve, parents are playing the role of both guardians and teachers. Hence, giving them the work-life balance they missed out on during the pre-pandemic days.
An early childhood education expert said there are pros and cons when it comes to learning from home for toddlers during the Movement Control Order, which is in the second phase following a spike in new Covid-19 cases in Malaysia.
Creena Alison Wong (pic), who has some 30 years’ experience in the education sector, said their Taska was permitted to reopen for frontliners and essential workers on Nov. 20 last year.
“As of now, Jabatan Kebajikan allows Taskas to operate. However, we are only allowed to accept 50pc of the number of students allocated on our permit.
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“Therefore, priority is given to frontliners and essential workers, and if there are available slots for parents who work from home (WFH), then their children can come back to our Taska.
“As for Tadikas, we opened on Jan. 18, 2021. So far we have about 50pc of parents who have opted to join our physical classes while another 50pc are continuing with daily Zoom classes,” said Creena, who has been operating Jolly Learners in Kota Kinabalu the past 15 years.
However, the mother of seven finds that this particular generation seemed to be more tech-savvy than their predecessors when it comes to online learning.
“For those who received the attention needed during the pandemic, I see a creative and tech-savvy generation in the making. Children will be spending more time searching the internet to gain knowledge.
“A generation that would prefer to work alone and yet not feel lonely because they will stay connected to friends and the world through the internet. A generation who will, hopefully, have more gratitude and not take things for granted,” Creena, who started her first pre-school in Kuala Lumpur 20 years ago, said.
She said WFH allows parents to have a better work-life balance.
“This will enable more people to realise that working from home is possible. Yes, we may not be able to do as much as we could in the office but having the opportunity to spend more time with our children will build up a closer relationship within the family and strengthen the family unit.
“On the downside, we may also have a lackadaisical or better known as the ‘tidak apa’ attitude that could be adopted by this generation, who have gotten so used to the comfort of their homes and the slow-paced life, which may cause them to be less driven.
“Some may tend to take things for granted which may result in them relying on their parents financially and emotionally,” she stressed on the prolonged effects of children’s growth when they’re stuck at home like the present.
Rest of the interview:
DE: What are some of the challenges?
Creena: The challenges faced by Taskas are that parents generally send their children to a Taska because they need to work. Therefore, during this pandemic, most parents have stopped sending their children to us since they work from home.
As for our Tadika, more parents continued to stay with us since we offered online Zoom classes.
It was indeed a great challenge for all parties as teachers had to make a paradigm shift and learn new ways of teaching in a short span of time. Parents, on the other hand, faced a huge challenge of being with their children 24/7, not only having to take care of them, work from home but to top it all up, teach them to read, write and count.
Children who are truly physical learners, had to adapt to seeing their teachers and friends on a screen, learn to listen to their teachers and try to learn remotely in a home environment.
Taska and Tadika, operators on the other hand, must pay their overheads such as rental, utilities and salaries. They need to maintain their centres as well as staff. Several Taska and Tadika operators in the recent months have had no choice but to close their centres because they were unable to cover their overhead costs.
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DE: Advice to parents with young children?
Creena: Safety and health must always be our priority for our children. If the Covid-19 cases are on the rise, please stay at home. Be good examples to your children in following the SOPs, children replicate what we do and action always speak louder than words.
Parents play a vital role in our children’s education. Last year, our five-year-old students learnt how to read, write, spell and count, due to the commitment made by their parents. They sat next to their children or got an older sibling to do so, just to ensure that their Zoom classes went on smoothly.
It is parents who ensure that a child sleeps early and wakes up early for their classes. It is they, who create a conducive learning environment at home for their children. A healthy relationship between mother and father will give a child security and confidence they need in life.
DE: With online classes becoming the mode of teaching during pandemic, is there a line between homeschooling and online classes anymore?
Creena: First of all, we need to see the different ways homeschooling can be conducted:
1. Parents as teachers: Parents will teach and organise learning activities for their children.
2. Homeschool co-op: A network of homeschooling parents comes together and taps into the skills and qualification of the parents.
3. Learning centres: Home-school centre is another way parents ensure that their children are taught under the guidance of teachers who are qualified in different subjects.
In my opinion, group one and two will remain different from online learning, especially since one is within the home and the second is usually in small groups. So what remains is the third group, but in order to decide whether there is a difference between the two, will depend on how the online classes are conducted.
So far, the home-schooling centres that I know of, conduct daily Zoom classes for their students. They try to keep to the physical timetable as much as possible, which means that the children even have online physical education (PE). This is also done by most private schools while physical classes are not allowed.
However, there are also many schools who claim to be doing online lessons. How these teachers carry out their classes are by uploading YouTube videos, written exercises and homework onto Google Classroom and parents are supposed to download and teach the children.
In such situations, there is no face-to-face teaching online, children are unable to ask questions, discuss their thoughts and learn from each other. For working parents, this method of ‘teaching’ has left children lost and unable to catch up with all the work they were expected to do independently.
Teachers need to realise that there is only so much a parent can do. This pandemic has caused most of us to lose a big amount of our income. Many have lost their jobs and are stressed due to finances and the uncertainty of tomorrow.
Having creative teachers who are able to think out of the box and continue online face-to-face classes with their students will definitely be great support to parents during this bewildering time.
Surrounded by nature: One of Creena’s students doing online class from the comfort of his home.
A parent doing project with a child.
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MEANWHILE, for the parents of a seven-year-old Mexican-Malaysian, they found the initial process of learning from home as an eye-opener.
“Since the pandemic is not improving, we find that it would be detrimental to our daughter’s education. We cannot let her be without formal education for the whole year!” Stephanie Lo, the mother, exclaimed.
Her Mexican husband Humberto Ramirez did some research online and came up with his own syllabus to teach their daughter Sofia.
“We realised that children do not need to spend four to six hours in school everyday.
“All they need is just 20 to 30 minutes of quality learning each day. Believe it or not, Sofia is now learning algebra at the age of seven years old! Before homeschooling, Maths was not her best subject.”
She added that since the first phase of MCO in March 2020, students were asked to use Google Classroom for online learning, but it comes with challenges.
“Firstly, most of Sofia’s instructional language is in Chinese, which is not our native language. Thus, as parents, we struggle to understand what the school is asking us to teach and naturally, Sofia could not understand what to learn. So, there goes the main subjects, Maths, Science, Moral and Chinese Language.
“However, we are not all-rounders. We still need help with other aspects of her education. We enrolled her to other online subjects such as ukulele (music) and drawing classes.”
In terms of Sofia’s social growth, they made sure that in the evening, Sofia gets to go out for physical activities and interact with the neighbour’s kids.
“As for religious education, we try our best to join online prayers or masses (services), and bedtime stories based on the Bible, but nothing beats teaching religion by being the role model ourselves. Start with praying together as a family.
“So, with all the resources around us that we can get access to during MCO, we made sure Sofia’s education needs are all fulfilled,” she said, adding that these include Logic, Reasoning, Artistic, Musical, Religion, Physical Activities and Social Interaction.
Sofia showing one of her art works.
Sofia showing one of her art works. From left: Stephanie with her newborn, Humberto and Sofia in a family portrait.