Shared involvement of teachers and parents a must

Jane D Hull says, “At the end of the day, the most overwhelming key to a child’s success is the positive involvement of parents.” Environment at both home and school contribute significantly towards shaping the behaviour of students. Parents are the first role models of the children. Teachers also often set benchmark of character defining attributes for students. It is important that contradictions in what the child observes at home and experiences in the school be minimized. The best way to achieve the aforementioned condition is positive and shared involvement of both the stakeholders.

“But why is my princess casted in a minor role in the school play?”, “I have personally organised special coaching near my home for my son and now he is not the part of playing eleven…”, “How can my child fail in examination despite paying heavy school fee?” Such and many more types of specific, non-specific, justified or unjustified complaints are received by the teaching faculty of the schools on most regular basis. Process of complaining could have been an important constituent of the feedback mechanism, but frivolous approach adopted by a section of parents renders this important tool ineffective. Three important stakeholders in the journey of learning are parents, teachers and students. Involvement of the parents in their children’s education is considered as essential.

THE PROBLEM

A school is not a shop of learning. This institution provides an inclusive learning environment that is responsive to student needs and in which each student happens to be treated as an individual, given the tools to be a lifelong learner and taught to function as a productive member of society. This is the narrative which should be developed in order to ensure creative contribution from all stakeholders reinforced with Positive Parent Involvement.

Parents’ involvement in their children’s education is a right and not a privilege. Like each student, every parent is also unique. Regular Parent-Teacher-Student interaction should be a norm and not an activity solely designed to communicate the ward’s examination results. Formal and informal platforms should be instituted to facilitate such interaction.

A detailed Parent Orientation Programme should be organised for each mile stone activity of the Student Learning Process. The vision, objectives and the education system of the school should be comprehensively shared with the parents during these interactions. Each child is endowed with different dominant ability set. Regular interactions with parents should be organised to identify these attributes for nurturing the students. Designing these forums to match the local environmental realities in terms of language and customs is a must. Informal channels of interaction like Chat Groups should be used for routine exchange of information between teachers and parents about relevant issues.

Twin aims of these activities should be anticipation and forecasting. Anticipation is for early recognition of both positive and negative developments in student’s learning experience so that appropriate course(s) corrections can be adopted. Forecasting facilitates designing an individual path for each child for maximizing the exploration of his/her special abilities.

“Education is painful, continual and difficult work to be done in kindness, by watching, by warning, by praise, but above all- by example,” said John Ruskin.