Good evening everyone,
Hope that everyone is enjoys their Saturday night as much as they can in this forsaken time, for me it will be beer and old Resident Evil movies, just because why should I watch one of the so many new titles when I can rewatch something that was crappy to begin with? :)
To begin with, as the title suggests I would like to talk a little about my part time job, working as a nursery teacher (as well as finishing with my undergraduate classes before I can move to proper Pedagogy studies for my postgraduate).
Since the first week of march my work place had been closed due to avoid spreading the pandemic (and, unluckily for my wallet and University training we will be closed until September, at the least), my employer has organise a small group with Google Classroom in which we propose some activities for the children to try to ease down this reclusion time for their parents as well and to keep in contact.
So, in the last couple of days I was preparing a small video as the follow up for my previous activity. The activity that I choose was painting eggs to make a little fish for the 'Little Mermaid' theme that we are doing now, just to make a little friend for my little mermaid to play with.
(The tail went missing because I did not glued it properly...)
It is of course a really simple activity, using all the material around the house because with the quarantine all the shops in my area that do not sell primary necessity have been closed down, this way me and my co workers have to run around the house looking for all the possible 'crap' to our eyes but has become vital with those activities that we organise.
I tend to make as few video as possible for those activities, for mostly two reasons (laziness is partially another reason, but of the bids one lol):
The first one is mostly related to my employer and her choices to organise those activities, proposing them as homework and prompting parents to submit their children work, which is quite gullible for children whom ages are between 8 months and 3 years old; and especially her plans to organise some activities specifically dived on the base of the gender of the child (i.e. painting nails for girls or building a car for boys). This second half of my first reasons is quite linked with my time working as an AuPair in the United Kingdom where I worked for a really progressive and open minded family where they encourage every activity without any restriction with genders, as an example I had my fingernail painted so many times in those two years. In my family too when I was a little boy my mother has never restricted more "girl" or "boy" activity with me and my younger sister, and I do not feel that I have turn out as a lesser man because I let my sister paint my nails when I was 5 years old.
The second reason, which is the most important to me, is related with the feedback of those activities. On the google classroom platform parents usually post back the activities that their children made, usually with lots of photo or small videos of their children. This usually makes me feel extremely sad and so lonely. Watching this children, that after all the time spent together has become mine as well (not in a creepy way lol), and this is probably the worst part of the quarantine for me.
I have been lucky enough to find a job that I love. A job that even after almost 12 hours straight, lives you with a smile and a warm heart, regardless all you problems and the HUGE amount of dirty nappies that you have to change before the end of the day (funnily enough, I have discovered that girls are the worst that way lol).
A job in which you can have all the problems with time, employers and co workers that you can probably find but, everything will be worth when you arrive and the children run towards you and greet you with a huge smile on their little faces.