On the occasion of International Women’s Day, we bring you some of the most notable and distinguished women eduleaders from the education industry to share their incredible journey, insights, and experiences. Here are the excerpts from the interview
Sunita Jain
Founder & Director
Hello Kids, India
Proper nutrition for ideal growth, precautionary measures to retard against diseases and maintaining hygiene to avoid health issues, good habits for a good character, moral stories for ethical development from early years, games and activities to enhance cognitive development, love and affection for emotional well-being are the various factors that should never be compromised and must be provided as a part of grooming a kid.
The environment in which a kid’s upbringing takes place also matters and hence, the atmosphere should be positive and ideal enough to be emulated by the child. Bringing up a kid is not a cakewalk because kids are explorers and they lack the know-how and maturity to differentiate between right and wrong. Therefore, necessary support should be given to enhance their skills from the early stage.
On the way forward
Pandemic has disrupted the educational sector hard and the early childhood care and preschool are the worst hit among them. Early childhood education through online medium is been adopted effectively. However, unlike the older kids who sit and attend the classes, the younger ones cannot be expected to do the same. Preschool teachers are teaching kids the very basics of everything, including identifying things, colours, etc, to learning alphabets and numerals. Moreover, preschool curriculum revolves around engaging kids in multiple games and activities. The online classes pose limitations to these. Also, kids needs to be observed closely and given individual attention, which cannot be done to its fullest through online classes. Kids also learn many things through touch and experience, which can also be not completely compensated through animated videos and classes.
Many parents hesitated to admit kids in online classes and instead waited for pandemic to end and offline classes to resume which kept on being delayed further than expected. This in turn affected the growth and skill development that should have taken place simultaneously to their physical growth.
Proper learning happens when it is done in the right environment with kids given proper attention, care, affection and necessary equipment and classes. Many were denied even the possible online classes which hampered their development. The limitations of online class included the screen exposure, emotional wellbeing, inhibiting going out and hence no outdoor activities affected the motor development; all these amounted to a severe learning loss for kids during the pandemic.
