Do parents come from Venus, while teachers come from Mars?
Why is it that parents who love being involved in their child’s education at pre-school and in kindergarten, slowly lose touch through the primary years, then finally drift away from their child’s school during the secondary years?
The gap in communication between schools and parents sometimes feels more like a gulf.
Parents’ evenings can become a rather odd affair where parents queue for their appointments in cramped corridors and massive, impersonal halls. Once you get to sit down on the under-sized chair, it hardly feels like a conversation about your child. The talk is usually of subjects and modules, and of what to do for extra marks. And some teachers talk all too readily in jargon about topics you barely recognize from your own days in school.
You might be delighted, you might be disappointed with your teacher’s news. What is pretty much certain is that the two of you – teacher and parent – don’t spend much time talking about how to raise your child well and educate them in the round. Might as well come from different planets.
Does it have to be this way?
No, and good schools are starting to fight back. Take the example of Toronto dad, Gerry Dunn who took it on himself recently to bridge the gap. He wrote a 140-page book for maths-rusty parents to help them understand just what their ten year-olds were saying.
Take the example of the teacher at my daughter’s school, who went out of her way to let me know that my daughter had done well in one of her subject papers and not so well in the other. She sent me information about what this meant and she pointed me to things I could do to help.
And so I helped.
Schools and parents are learning the way of ‘parental engagement’. The main difference between countries where students do well in school and countries where they do not, isn’t the school system. It’s the way parents engage with their own children and help to motivate and educate them.
Parents want help in this area. And if schools set out to improve that link between the adult and their child, using well-researched advice about how to raise and educate a child, they can find that both child and parent become willing partners. It’s good to talk.
It is time we all tried to live on the same planet!
