With the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus forcing schools to close, online teaching poses challenges for both public and private institutions.
Stabroek News reached out to an owner of a private school who shared her experience of how COVID-19 has impacted her business and caused her to break away from the typical mode of learning in order to reach and cater to her customers.
Readonna Howell, owner of Brilliant Beginnings: Preschool, Nursery and Primary, told Stabroek News that COVID-19 has caused many parents to raise concerns about what her next move would be with regard to school closures.
The wife and mother of three, described her school as her main source of income. Even with her husband working, utility bills generated by daily living and the running of a school at the same location, was a lot to manage, she said.
Howell disclosed, “Financially I have suffered a great loss,” as she explained that apart from the tuition fees that made it possible to meet operational expenses, her “aftercare” was an additional means of sourcing income to reach needs not met by tuition. This she added, is now non-existent due to the global pandemic.
She also mentioned that her employees have also suffered since they too are now out of work.
When asked about challenges she faced, Howell stated, “Even though school is closed, I still have my bills to pay just like everyone else,” and as a parent and the head of a school she said she was forced to seek alternative methods of teaching.
However, she said, “This has not been without its challenges.”
Howell stated, that like many others, she too was introduced to Zoom, the now very popular cloud meeting app.
To ensure that it was suitable for her students, she decided to test the app for a period of three weeks, utilising Mondays to Thursdays, one hour per day for each school grade before making her final decision, on whether to continue using the app as a means to conduct her classes for the final school term.
She said issues of poor internet connection and sudden power outages were something she had to work around. However, after exploring other options, she decided that Zoom was the best way forward.
However, this alternative did not go as well as hoped, after learning that all her staff were not on board with exploring the new method of teaching. This, she said, led her to seek outside help where she now collaborates with Tracy Hughes of Genesis Phonics Centre.
She also informed this newspaper, that she was not successful in assisting all her students. Some parents still needed to work, thus children were left at home with grandparents and caregivers who were not tech savvy, others did not have access to Wi-Fi, while the remainder were not involved due to the lack of open-mindedness and unwillingness to embrace something that was nontraditional.
Personally, she said it was a lot more work, requiring advance preparation and more costly.
She explained, that even though students are having reduced class hours, due to limited teachers on board, it is a regular 8 am to 5:30 pm working day for her, since the classes cater for children from nursery to grade 6.
She expressed her need to take the opportunity to say to parents “COVID-19 will pass; and even while it is here, life has not stopped.”
Howell encourages parents to be more open-minded and embrace whatever is out there to keep children gainfully occupied, as she informed the newspaper, that she too was forced to introduce her grade 8 son, who attends President’s College, to online classes taught at a private institute.
She further emphasised the need to introduce technology in teaching, as she observed that “Most of our Guyanese children have personal devices, but they are mainly used for entertainment, so our children are not technologically literate, and therefore, completely dependent on a guardian, some of whom are just as unfamiliar with the technology to guide the children.”
