Pri­vate pre-school teacher Re­nee Gor­don is now shar­ing how in­no­v­a­tive she has been forced to be­come since na­tion­al re­stric­tions went in­to ef­fect on March 16 as part of the fight against the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19). She says this in­no­va­tion is all that is keep­ing her busi­ness afloat.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia last week, Gor­don, one of the first off the start­ing blocks to in­tro­duce on­line teach­ing and learn­ing, said al­though var­i­ous ini­tia­tives and mech­a­nisms have been put in place to as­sist pub­lic schools at all lev­els, “no one is tak­ing the pri­vate pre-schools in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.”

“All the pri­vate schools have been shut down. There is no in­come com­ing in for the teach­ers. There are no grants avail­able. Every­one in the pri­vate pre-school realm is high­ly stressed be­cause you can­not force par­ents to do the on­line class­es,” Gor­don said.

Gor­don owns and op­er­ates Ren’s Bright Be­gin­ners Pre-School and Day­care along the La­dy Young Road in Mor­vant. She said many par­ents are mak­ing use of the on­line Zoom Class­room she now hosts for two hours three days per week.

Say­ing she has been able to tran­si­tion from class­room teach­ing to an on­line set­ting, Gor­don said: “It’s been work­ing awe­some, as we have been able to con­tin­ue our termly syl­labus and al­so in­tro­duce new top­ics, so we have been able to com­plete our sec­ond term’s work.”

Ex­cit­ed to get in­to the syl­labus out­lined for the third term, Gor­don said: “We are prepar­ing pack­ages, so we have cre­at­ed sys­tems for our par­ents. Every Mon­day they come to the school as we have a drop­box sys­tem in place to col­lect and drop off the stu­dent’s port­fo­lio.”

She ex­plained the port­fo­lios con­tain work-sheets for every day of the week.

“So at the start of the week, they drop off the one from the week be­fore and col­lect the one for the week ahead,” she ex­plained.
“Even though the Zoom Class­room is on­ly three days per week, there is al­so writ­ten work for the stu­dents to com­plete dai­ly, just as if they were phys­i­cal­ly in school.”

Asked what mo­ti­vat­ed her to en­sure her stu­dents’ school­ing was not un­du­ly in­ter­rupt­ed, Gor­don said: “There is a mis­con­cep­tion of the younger chil­dren, where many peo­ple don’t un­der­stand this is the most im­por­tant part in a child’s life be­cause pre-school is where you build that foun­da­tion, and if it’s not prop­er­ly sound, then you will have a prob­lem in the oth­er stages of their ed­u­ca­tion.”

She added: “This is why we have put so much in­to mak­ing sure our chil­dren get what they need to com­plete our syl­labus. Where­as the min­istry has said schools are closed, we are not closed...we have just switched lo­ca­tion.”

Gor­don said a tod­dler pro­gramme has al­so been in­tro­duced for her younger pupils and pack­ages al­so com­piled for them to com­plete at home.

Asked how her stu­dents and par­ents are re­spond­ing to the Zoom Class­room con­cept, Gor­don said her pre-school par­ents have con­tin­ued to pay the month­ly fees as their chil­dren’s ed­u­ca­tion is con­tin­u­ing.

“The chil­dren are ex­cit­ed to be us­ing the tech­nol­o­gy but they are kids, so there’s the chal­lenge of get­ting them to sit still and stay fo­cused. I have had to cre­ate fun ways to get to them to fo­cus, so we in­cor­po­rate every­thing like in school where we have mu­sic and move­ment.”

Gor­don said the Zoom ap­pli­ca­tion al­so al­lows the stu­dents to view each oth­er so they still main­tain a lev­el of so­cial in­ter­ac­tion al­beit on­line.

She laughed as she said: “When it comes time to say good­bye, they’re busy ask­ing each oth­er ques­tions and wav­ing to one an­oth­er.”

Gor­don said they al­so post the class­es on their so­cial me­dia page so the pupils can see one an­oth­er and it en­cour­ages them to want to par­tic­i­pate even more.

Pri­or to COVID-19, Gor­don had al­so been work­ing with a hand­ful of SEA stu­dents whom she is con­tin­u­ing to men­tor.

“This way, all my chil­dren would be pre­pared to con­tin­ue their school­ing when­ev­er the aca­d­e­m­ic term re­sumes, but I have tried to make it fun and ex­cit­ing dur­ing this time so they don’t feel like it’s a chore es­pe­cial­ly as they are now at home.”

Gor­don is ap­peal­ing to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to pro­vide a greater lev­el of as­sis­tance to pri­vate schools who are con­tin­u­ing to do their part to en­sure teach­ing and learn­ing takes place dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. (ALP)