Pandemic Challenges for Professional Women in Teaching

 

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'Challenges are what make life interesting, overcoming them is what makes life meaningful'.  Are you sure?

As I was going through this quote, I was wondering are we emphasizing the same through our education policies.  Every day is a challenge, is understood, but the mindset to face it and overcome is with few.  Today, we are in dearth of quality manpower.  In India, we are well aware quality of teachers is an area that we seriously need to focus on. Major cities still do not have much issues, however the other cities are facing this issue to the greatest level, now more than ever.  Is education going to be restricted to cities and are we going to go through a phase where we have a situation where our future generations lack quality education just because they cannot afford to live in capital cities?

Teaching has already become a profession of 'chance' rather than 'by choice'.  I had personally, once faced a fresh MBA candidate submitting the resume for 'Principal's' post.  When questioned about experience the answer was simple 'running a school does not require any separate experience, I have my MBA'.  Teaching profession has become even more easy choice as a transition job for graduates.  With acute scarcity of people, schools are forced to recruit candidates without exposure or an idea about pedagogy.  This situation is become more predominant during the pandemic.  Other jobs have a good graded scale of pay which builds the person bottom-up clearly.  Teaching has become more open with the judgmental eyes of parent from the day one during COVID times.  The period of  'in-profession training' has become nil or '0'. The very first day onwards parents start sending emails about the teacher's attire, speech, delivery and also subject proficiency.  In-fact, guidance is free  from the very first day of school in online scenario.  The schools have had their own experienced teachers before the pandemic.  What do you think has happened to them?

The new challenges of the pandemic are even more crucial to maintain the quality in education.  The orthodoxy feeling and practice that the salary of women is a secondary source of income and is not a major contributor is major culprit for this thought process.  Many a women who are successful professionals not only in teaching but in other areas too are restricted to their homes due to this dogma that is prevalent from times, more specifically during pandemic.  Teaching is the area that is most affected under this belief.  Women are asked take are of home and temporarily stop their profession as the 'home demands their services'.  Consequence lack of experienced teaching staff within schools. With men also working from home the family needs more attention.  Online classes of children has also added an extra burden on these women to monitor them when at home. Definitely, the pandemic has caused both job loss and job opportunities. Unfortunately, it is our reluctance to accept this change and allow balance at home that has created this artificial pressure in institutions.  

Countries like Finland, NewZealand have already set examples of parental partnership in child growth.  This partnership is on the basis that both parents are equally responsible for their kids growth.  Taking care is not a limited forte of the mother.  This attitude is though new to this part of Asia, needs to be promoted and emphasized as the society and economies of countries grow.  The thought process that a women also has passion in her work and would like to succeed should be rooted from the school education.  However, though we have accepted higher education for women but still the practices of homecare taking predominance is still highly prevalent in our society.  

Home ground becomes a field of trust and balance after marriages.  It is very important that outlook of our society changes in bringing both equality and equity among relations.  Until this is sorted, we may not be developed or open-minded to approach solutions of problems that are prevalent today.   'We don't grow when things are easy, we grow only when we face challenges'.  Till our society is ready to change their mindset, pandemic challenges can handicap us. Leaving with a thought into an alternatives as pandemic in our society should not become an economic endemic in our lives.