Working from home as a Nursery Teacher.

My mother is a Nursery Teacher and so I thought I would ask her about her experience working from home.

Since the pandemic she has been teaching from home, and for the past few months she has alternated between in person classes and online classes throughout the week.

"Teaching 4-6 year olds through a screen is of course, difficult. It has been quite a challenge because it's hard to get their attention through the screen," she says.

My mother is based in Yangon, Myanmar, where there is currently a military coup and civil war going on. It is due to these reasons that she has not been able to switch back to full in-person classes.

She says one of the main problems she regularly faces is the connection problems. Due to the country's situation, the network connection is very unstable so the classes usually consists of a series of incidents where either the teacher or the students lose connection from time to time. This can become a hassle and is rather distracting and loses time too.

However, she says that she has noticed that she has been able to make faster and more progress in the lessons as the children are receiving help from their parents. Since most of the time, there is an adult supervising the child, to help with the technical things, the adults also ensure that they are following instructions well, which contributes on the overall progress of the lessons.

On the other hand, my mom says that some parents are not happy with these online class arrangements, since they themselves have to be around the child during class, or they have to find someone else to help, since the child needs someone to manage the computer and technical issues.

I asked my mom if she prefers teaching in-person or online and she says that both has their pros and cons.

'When I have in-person classes, we are able to do more activities together, like PE and art. Sometimes though, it's hard to get all of their attention because it's just me and my assistant teacher. But that's all part of teaching and I enjoy it,' she says.

She says that working from home has allowed her to spend less time on commute and allows her to have more time to spend with family. She also says that she enjoys being able to take more care of our pets and play with them in between classes. She also mentioned that it has allowed her to have lunch with the rest of the family everyday, which she normally would not be able to.

"All in all, I do think the in-person learning experience is better for children as they have the opportunity to properly get to know their classmates and play with them, because it's really not easy to connect with each other through their screens. When we first switched back to hybrid, it was a bit awkward as the children were not familiar with each other since they had only seen their faces through the screen. But now they are adjusting well!"