ECD Teachers Appreciation

Media Description: 
Parents and children of the ANZ Jamat show their appreciation in recognition of the dedication and commitment of the ECD teachers in running virtual classes during the pandemic lockdown time.
13 October 2020 | ANZ

ECD@Home Virtual Classes

Early Childhood Development (ECD) education is an important mandate of the Aga Khan Education Board (AKEB) for Australia and New Zealand (ANZ). The classes are run for parents and children aged 0-60months each month. The focus of these ECD classes is to support, engage and educate parents of/and 0 months to 60 months old children in their development of mind, body and spirit. As we know, in the first five years of life, experiences and relationships stimulate children’s development, creating millions of connections in their brains. Considering the objective, Early Childhood Educators develop class activities aiming for children physical, social, emotional, behavioral, spiritual and language development.

Covid-19 pandemic has altered the pedagogical approach of ECD from physical classes to digital learning using Zoom platform. It did challenge ECD content experts to modify the lesson plans and bring innovations into the class activities to suit the digital delivery, at the same time, it had put pressure on ECD teachers to explore and learn alternative ways of delivering the content to parents and young children. In ANZ, virtual classes started in early May. To ensure the class quality is maintained and access is continued; the following preparations took place:

  1. Teachers have been trained and mentored to enhance confidence and competence to teach virtual classes;
  2. Smaller centers have been combined with larger centers to build capacity and ensuring continuity of the classes;
  3. ECD @ Home virtual classes have been promoted, and parental orientation sessions were held to increase parental understanding of virtual classes;
  4. ECD @ Home virtual classes content has been made available to all parents to make sure every child can access ECD content if parents choose not to attend the virtual classes;
  5. Parents feedback was attained after a few virtual classes. Parents responses were overwhelming. In total, 75 parents responded, and overall experience of ECD @ home virtual classes was 8.0 out of 10.

Towards the end of the term, ECD children and parents put their hands together in recognition of teachers for all their commitment, dedication, innovations and hard work during this difficult, rather challenging times.