Online classes are real home work
The parents also urge their children to exercise, with skipping ropes and situps.
The family's daily schedule is jampacked.
"Every morning when my husband is cooking breakfast, I'm working on chopping vegetables and meat to ensure lunch can be cooked quickly," says Liu.
On the busiest days, Liu has to handle a lot of work and she feels pangs of guilt about not being able to "be a parent".
"My children have got used to seeing their parents consistently on telephone calls," says Liu.
The good news is that she found her children to be more capable and understanding after experiencing the crisis.
"They are growing up faster. I'm so proud that they are now more independent and hardworking," she adds.
Among hundreds of thousands of primary and middle school teachers, many have to take care of their own children at home, as well as recording online classes.
Some teachers are also facing an unprecedented challenge.
Hai Na, a Chinese literature and language teacher at Beijing No 15 High School, says she has learned a lot of online teaching skills from her colleagues.
Now responsible for two classes of sophomores, each with around 30 teenagers, Hai has worked diligently on preparing diverse content. This ranges from figuring out a theme for students to discuss online－such as brainstorming ancient poems about snow－to teaching classics, including French novelist Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
Mother to a 2-year-old son, Hai is frequently interrupted by the toddler. One day when she was livestreaming an online class, the boy suddenly ran into her room and chanted nursery rhymes, to laughter from Hai's students.
On advice from her fellow teachers, Hai now records classes in advance, when the boy is sleeping.
"I'm missing the days of teaching my students face-to-face," says Hai.
Contact the writer at xufan@chinadaily.com.cn
