The Staycation Project: CHILL (dren) in da house
As part of our course entitled “Leadership and Emotional Intelligence Lab”, we were asked to produce useful content related to emotional intelligence and leadership skills with the aim of informing, empowering and consequently positively dealing with this difficult period of Covid-19. More specific we chose to focus in more detail on two specific categories of citizens, parents and educators.
Essentially, our topic was parents with young children up to 12 years old and the actions of teachers regarding the situation during quarantine. We approached this issue by taking interviews either via Skype or by phone. Our sample was 7 parents and 2 teachers. At the same time, we created a video and 2 infographics.
The questions we asked the parents were:
1.How did your child react when the event occurred and what is his/her/they behavior over time?
2. How did you explain to your child the situation as it was due to the pandemic?
3. Did you manage to manage your anxiety and not pass it on to your child?
4. Did you seek the advice of an expert so that you could talk to your child?
5. Do you think the next day will be psychologically easy for you to reintegrate your child into school and extracurricular activities?
6. How would you explain to your child that the next day, during the adjustment period, will not be exactly as he knew it before the outbreak of the pandemic?
The questions we asked the teachers were:
1. How did you prepare the new way of teaching during the pandemic?
2. Did you get any specialized advice before the online courses started?
3. How did you manage the children’s questions and concerns?
4. Was there a difficult/ challenging event during the lessons and how did you deal with it?
5. Did your students express the need to discuss the event, did they show any particular emotion towards it?
6. As a teacher did you give any specific instructions or advice to the parents of your students?
Throughout the interviews, we received great feedback. There were various reactions from children and teachers. Some children had difficulty with this situation while others took it more positively.
Most parents tried to explain the situation through fairy tales and chatting. Most felt that reuniting with their children would be a difficult task. As for the teachers, their first concern was to encourage the children to create an account in a teleconferencing program and to maintain their curriculum.
Both teachers we interviewed did their research before starting the lesson through articles and tried to help, the children and their parents in all areas, not only in education.
As additional material, we have created two infographics that depict real data from valid published research. We drew these percentages and compared them with the information we received from the interviews we took.
The video we created is based on the findings from the interviews. It shows that teachers teach the classes through teleconferences, that children spend their time creatively and the ways they can be employed by their parents.
Finally, the social media posts we created include tips and smart ideas for children’s creative work at home. At the same time, they include expert opinions on the Covid-19 situation and a picture of what children’s lives will be like after quarantine.
The Calderons: Vivi Kardatos, varvara pantazopoulou, Christina Baltouna
Assistant professor: Dimitra Iordanoglou
