The coronavirus pandemic has affected all dimensions of daily life for millions of people around the world. The social and financial consequences are more noticeable every day. From the San José center in Ajusco (Mexico City) we have been working with the community during the months of confinement with a nutritional support program and distance educational activities for girls and boys of preschool ages, with their challenges and problems , since not all families have the means for digital and remote monitoring. The center was working in this way from the beginning of the confinement due to the pandemic, in mid-March, until the end of the school year at the end of June 2020.
For the start of the new academic year 2020-2021, the San José center team, together with the parents, considered the need to reopen the center to continue offering its services to the 115 girls and boys enrolled. The idea was to work with them with educational activities and to resume the nutritional services using the center at a quota of 40% of its capacity, while observing all the sanitary safety measures. To organize how to function in this new modality we had meetings with the parents, and receiving all their support, finally, on August 31, we reopened the doors of the center for the start of the new school year.
It was a very different beginning, compared with previous years. We are used to handling more than 100 children on a daily basis, and now receiving only a third of them makes the operation more agile: the center facilities feel calmer, with an unusual order in the classrooms, compared to working with the whole group. In the same way, we noticed that most of the children feel more welcome with a small group, they receive more attention from the teacher and they feel more sheltered. The other point to highlight is that there are almost no absences, except for illness or some matter that prevents it, since parents do not want to miss the only days that their children now have to attend the center. They are very excited and grateful to the center for this initiative and they all hope that the bad times we are experiencing due to the pandemic will soon pass and that we can return to normality.
For this new way of working, one of the preventive measures for health is the mandatory use of masks, which is a very big challenge for such young children: they lose them, bite them or forget about their use, although we try to use them correctly all the time.
The teachers are happy with this initiative, although they have to make an extra effort to achieve optimal learning results with the children. Apart from the activities they carry out with the children in the center, they continue to work remotely with the parents, sending homework, solving questions and having consultancy appointments with them when necessary.
The children of the San José center are very happy to be able to return after several months, although they do not understand very well why they are attending in small numbers, and some ask their teachers why can they just come every day. Even in these exceptional circumstances, at the San José center they receive comprehensive care, and that is what, in the end, really matters.
