After a six-week break, teachers and learners resume back to school and academic activities begin in earnest. This session promises to be full of many success stories. It was a long holiday period for the learners except the ephemeral, intermittent attendance at the four-week summer coaching. But for the teachers and the schools, such a break is always an opportunity for reflective thinking and goals setting against the new academic session. Both the teachers and parents have enormous roles to play in the realisation of the goals. It is pertinent I discourse the goals before a discourse on the teachers’ and parents’ roles.
Commencement of academic session without definite goals is tantamount to a planless academic endeavor. Such a session will surely end in an abyss of failure.
Some of the goals are as follows;
First, teachers must ensure that those avoidable pedagogic errors committed in the previous session must never be repeated this new academic session. It is a goal that requires intensive deliberation of how learners perceived to be competence-challenged will be dedicatedly attended to and assisted to record excellent performance this session.
Also, learners with illegible handwriting deserves consistent and genuine remedial handwriting classes throughout the session. Besides, another goal is adequate professional provision for slow learners in each class. How this goal is achieved depends largely on the school’s programme. In addition, a school sets a goal that there will be some significant improvements and meteoric rise in the academic performance of all learners.
All these and many other goals set by the school are achievable with the active symbiotic roles of teachers and parents.
What are the Parents’ Roles?
Charity is always said to begin at home. I want to believe that this assertion is still a reality. Each parent’s role in education does not stop when the child enters school. The parent provides the foundation on which teachers are able to build further educational structures. Parents’ roles are stated below.
Be a Role Model for Learning.
In the early years, parents are their children’s first teachers — exploring nature, reading together, cooking together, and counting together. When a young child begins formal school, the parent’s job is to guide him through how school can extend the learning you began together at home, and how exciting and meaningful this learning can be. As preschoolers grow into school age kids, parents become their children’s learning coaches. Through guidance and reminders, parents help their kids organize their time and support their desires to learn new things in and out of school.
Pay Attention to what the Child Learns at School
One of the most important things a parent can do is notice her child. Is he a talker or is he shy? Find out what interests him and help him explore it. Let your child show you the way he likes to learn, recommends Dalton Miller-Jones, (Ph.D).
Set Aside Time to Read Together
Read aloud regularly, even to older kids. If your child is a reluctant reader, reading aloud will expose her to the structure and vocabulary of good literature and get her interested in reading more. “Reading the first two chapters of a book together can help, because these are often the toughest in terms of plot,” notes Susan Becker, (M. Ed). “Also try alternating: you read one chapter aloud, she reads another to herself. And let kids pick the books they like. Book series are great for reluctant readers. It’s OK to read easy, interesting books instead of harder novels.”
Connect What your Child learns to Everyday Life.
Make learning part of your child’s everyday experience, especially when it comes out of your child’s natural questions. When you cook together, do measuring math. When you drive in the car, count number plates and talk about the states. When you turn on the blender, explore how it works together.
Assist Your Child with Homework,
This is one of the challenges teachers face. Parents expect an outstanding performance but are too busy to assist their children with homework given at school. Miracles are always expected from the school. I am not unaware that many parents of nowadays, especially in this part of the world are impenetrably engaged. There is little or no time to play their parental roles. For the busy parents, some of the roles such as homework execution and reading could be given to a private teacher. This is a perfect alternative.
Teachers’ Roles
There is this age-long assertion whose relevance lives eternally: “you can’t give what you don’t have”. The teachers play two major roles in the academic wellbeing of a learner. The goal of a school is outstanding academic performance at the end of a session.
A teacher saddled with the task must possess two essential skills: competence and performance. Competence is mastery of the subject and performance represents lesson delivery. These two skills are liken to a pair of scissors. Both blade must be functional to cut an object. Where a teacher possesses one of two, it jeopardises their pedagogic performance in the classroom, and the learners are at the receiving end.
Another roles a teacher plays in a learner’s academic life is to act in loco parentis. It is no exaggeration that learners spend most of their time in the school. The implication is that they relate with the teachers more than their parents. They see the teachers as their parents and guardians. The teachers are responsible for their overall academic performance at the end of the session. Money is not easy to get; no parents can afford to waste their hard-earned money. They are eager to see good results of the service they have paid for. That is why when the learners fail, the teachers fail too.
On Friday, I will discussed on:
“Performance Improvement and Challenges Mitigating against the Roles of Teachers”
