Chan­dra B Pan­day

Prin­ci­pal, El Do­ra­do South Hin­du School

A teacher, while walk­ing along the cor­ri­dors of the school no­ticed a group of stu­dents idly chat­ting and en­joy­ing the com­pa­ny of one an­oth­er. He ob­served an emp­ty juice box next to the group and po­lite­ly asked one of the pupils to pick up the box and put it in­to the garbage bin. One of the pupils will­ing­ly oblig­ed. The next morn­ing the said teacher was sum­moned to the prin­ci­pal's of­fice where he met the par­ents of the child who had thrown the emp­ty box in­to the garbage. The par­ents had come to the school to lodge an of­fi­cial com­plaint to the prin­ci­pal about the in­struc­tion of the teacher the pre­vi­ous day.

In no un­cer­tain terms it was made abun­dant­ly clear that they did not send their son to school to pick up any garbage. The par­ents were an­gered that their child was made to pick up the garbage and ex­pect­ed that the prin­ci­pal would take ac­tion and se­vere­ly rep­ri­mand the teacher for is­su­ing such a di­rec­tive. Af­ter some rather un­com­fort­able mo­ments in the dis­cus­sion, the teacher re­alised that if he were to bring an end to the dis­cus­sion and pre­vent the par­ents from tak­ing the mat­ter any fur­ther, an apol­o­gy was need­ed.

Against his bet­ter judge­ment and that of the prin­ci­pal, he apol­o­gised to the par­ents. The par­ents left and both the teacher and the prin­ci­pal were left to re­flect on the is­sue. Need­less to say, any prin­ci­pal or teacher who has had to deal with irate par­ents knows that try­ing to rea­son or ex­plain sit­u­a­tions are some­times im­pos­si­ble. There are many oth­er in­ci­dents that oc­cur on a dai­ly ba­sis in schools across the coun­try; I wish to high­light some such sit­u­a­tions.

• Late ar­rival at school on a reg­u­lar ba­sis.

• En­ter­ing the school build­ing be­fore and af­ter school. No par­ent should en­ter the school build­ing with­out per­mis­sion. Par­ents must know that the school build­ing is for the pupils. It is com­mon to see par­ents com­ing in on a morn­ing and stay­ing back on an evening to copy work from the black­board. It is as if the child is in­ca­pable of do­ing this. Some­times if the child didn't fin­ish some work in class, they de­mand that an­oth­er child stay back so they could get the miss­ing in­for­ma­tion.

• Con­fronting oth­er chil­dren on the school com­pound. Some­times chil­dren tell their par­ents about sit­u­a­tions in the class be­fore the teacher and some of these par­ents feel that they could come to the school and is­sue warn­ings and threats to oth­er chil­dren.

• Pupils are ab­sent from school and no for­mal no­tice of their ab­sence is giv­en. It is com­mon cour­tesy for par­ents to write a note to the teacher pro­vid­ing an ex­pla­na­tion for the child's ab­sence. Re­mem­ber, it's cour­tesy, and these lit­tle habits go a long way in char­ac­ter build­ing.

• Call­ing the school on a reg­u­lar ba­sis ask­ing that a mes­sage be re­layed to the child. Come on! Many times par­ents call and say that they are run­ning late and ask us to tell their child to wait. Is it too dif­fi­cult to teach the pupils to wait on the school com­pound un­til the par­ents ar­rive? On­ly in emer­gency sit­u­a­tions should a par­ent call the school and ask that a mes­sage be re­layed. A de­lay of a few min­utes af­ter school does not qual­i­fy as an emer­gency.

• Lit­tle dis­agree­ments among chil­dren would end up in push­ing and shov­ing in­ci­dents, some­times even a lit­tle fight. One child will take some­thing that doesn't be­long to him and not want to re­turn it un­less the teacher gets in­volved. Chil­dren will not al­ways speak the truth, es­pe­cial­ly when they could twist the truth to weave their way out of trou­ble. It some­times takes teach­ers hours to get to the bot­tom of a sim­ple in­ci­dent in­volv­ing chil­dren.

When these and oth­er sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions oc­cur, teach­ers have to be very care­ful what they say, how they say it, and of­ten are re­quired to ex­plain why they say it. There are in­ci­dents when chil­dren are caught steal­ing-and I am not sim­ply re­fer­ring to a pen­cil here or a pen there. Chil­dren are caught go­ing in­to oth­er chil­dren's bags dur­ing the break pe­ri­ods. In some in­stances, chil­dren have been caught tak­ing things from the teach­ers' ta­bles, draws or bags. There are wit­ness­es to these ac­tions and when the chil­dren are asked about it, they ad­mit. When the par­ents are no­ti­fied, the sto­ry usu­al­ly takes a dif­fer­ent turn. The par­ents ac­cuse the teach­ers of la­belling their chil­dren and wrong­ful­ly ac­cus­ing them. Teach­ers find them­selves in con­flict with the par­ents when they at­tempt to ad­dress neg­a­tive is­sues con­cern­ing chil­dren. I guess this is based on the premise that no par­ent ever wants to hear any­thing neg­a­tive about their child.

As far as they are con­cerned, the child is al­ways right; the teacher is al­ways wrong, and there is nev­er any ground in be­tween. Very of­ten many par­ents miss the point that the ob­ser­va­tions, sug­ges­tions and dis­cus­sions by the teacher are de­signed to help the child and to re­place neg­a­tive be­hav­iour with more pos­i­tive ac­tions.

• Home­work is an is­sue by it­self. Home­work and oth­er class­room as­sign­ments have very im­por­tant pos­i­tive con­se­quences in the aca­d­e­m­ic de­vel­op­ment of a child. Very sim­ply, home­work is giv­en by the teacher to help in the con­sol­i­da­tion of the work done in class. It pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty to prac­tice what was done in the class, as we know that prac­tice makes per­fect.

Par­ents treat home­work as­sign­ments with­out any re­gard of its im­por­tance and if the child comes to school the next day with­out home­work, then the teacher has to ac­cept it. The child will of­fer some sil­ly rea­son and have the back­ing of the par­ent. It is usu­al­ly the par­ent who would tell the child what ex­cuse to give.

• Projects are cas­es by them­selves. In most schools, pupils have to do a project for the term. The pos­i­tives of such an ex­er­cise will re­quire an ar­ti­cle even longer that this one, so I ask for you to ac­cept that a project is a very worth­while as­sign­ment. Once the project is as­signed and the re­quire­ments are out­lined, the par­ents do the project. In some cas­es, the project be­comes a com­pe­ti­tion among the par­ents to see who can out­do the oth­er. When the project is fi­nal­ly sub­mit­ted, the teacher knows that he/she has to cor­rect and grade the par­ents' work and noth­ing in the project is that of the child. If the teacher re­fus­es to as­sign a grade for the project be­cause of the stat­ed rea­son, then the par­ents are of­fend­ed and here­in lies an­oth­er con­flict. Some­times as the teach­ers mon­i­tor the progress of the project be­fore its due date, they will in­form the pupils about their par­ents' in­put, but the fi­nal sub­mis­sion is still al­ways that of the par­ents. To ver­i­fy the pupils' in­put some­times the teach­ers will ask the child sim­ple ques­tions on the project and the child is clue­less.

• If it is per­ceived that on a giv­en school day the aca­d­e­mics are sus­pend­ed, the chil­dren are kept home. For in­stance, term test is al­ways in the penul­ti­mate week of school. The last week, the teach­ers will re­view test scripts, dis­cuss pupils' er­rors and make sug­ges­tions for im­prove­ment. But for most par­ents, 'test done', so there is no need to go to school. Sim­ply wait for the last day, go to school and col­lect the re­port. In de­nom­i­na­tion­al school, if a re­li­gious func­tion is to be held, this sig­nals a 'day-off' to many stu­dents.

From my ex­pe­ri­ence a teacher and a prin­ci­pal, I could add many more points to this list, but enough has been out­lined to demon­strate how many par­ents dis­re­spect the school and the per­son­nel in the school sys­tem. In most cas­es (I re­al­ly want­ed to use the ab­solute term 'all') par­ents on­ly come to school when they have an is­sue with the prin­ci­pal or teacher(s). There is al­ways a con­fronta­tion, a con­flict to re­solve, an apol­o­gy to make or a po­si­tion to de­fend. There are very rarely any mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tions be­tween par­ents and teach­ers.

To­day, the lit­er­a­ture is rich in the ben­e­fits of parental in­volve­ment but in many in­stances, this in­volve­ment is trans­lat­ed in­to deal­ing with un­pleas­ant sit­u­a­tions. How many par­ents can hon­est­ly say that they have vis­it­ed the school and asked rel­e­vant ques­tions about their child? Con­sid­er these ques­tions: (the par­ent is speak­ing to the teacher)

Good morn­ing Miss. How are you to­day?

How is my son pro­gress­ing in your class?

Are you sat­is­fied with his progress?

Do you think he is ca­pa­ble of more?

Is he ex­pe­ri­enc­ing any prob­lems?

Are you gen­er­al­ly sat­is­fied with his aca­d­e­m­ic growth?

Is he po­lite and re­spect­ful to oth­er mem­bers of staff?

Does he com­plete his home­work all the time?

How is his be­hav­iour?

Does he pay at­ten­tion in class?

Does he get along well with his class­mates?

Does he share?

Is he po­lite and re­spect­ful to his class­mates?

Have you ever had any prob­lems with his lan­guage?

Thank you Miss for all that you are do­ing.

Again, the list of ques­tions can go on and on, but I am sure you have the gen­er­al idea. In­stead, neg­a­tive ques­tions are asked and ac­cu­sa­tions are made by par­ents. All par­ents make the claim of lov­ing their chil­dren and even go as far as to say that every­thing they do is for their child. Well, if this is to have the mer­it it de­serves, then these par­ents must re­alise that teach­ers, prin­ci­pals and schools play a sig­nif­i­cant role in the re­al­i­sa­tion of this dream and they should not ex­clude the school, the teacher and the prin­ci­pal if they ex­pect their child to reach full po­ten­tial. Re­spect the school. Re­spect the teacher. Re­spect the prin­ci­pal. As a con­se­quence of such ac­tions, then the teacher and prin­ci­pal will re­spect the par­ent. Mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sions are found­ed in the mu­tu­al re­spect of both par­ties.

Ed­u­ca­tion is fo­cused on three mains things-knowl­edge, skills and char­ac­ter. Let us work to­wards pro­vid­ing an en­vi­ron­ment that would fa­cil­i­tate the con­struc­tion of knowl­edge, the ac­qui­si­tion of skills and the de­vel­op­ment of char­ac­ter. These three in­gre­di­ents are need­ed when we speak of ed­u­cat­ing chil­dren and one with­out the oth­er just won't do. I know that some par­ents would make the claim that there are teach­ers and prin­ci­pals who are dif­fi­cult to deal with and while their in­ten­tions are pos­i­tive, they meet with hur­dles and ob­sta­cles. I am sure that this is so in some cas­es, but the ma­jor­i­ty of teach­ers and prin­ci­pals are car­ing and con­cerned about the progress of their pupils and are will­ing to en­gage the par­ents.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion must find ways to deal with the re­cal­ci­trant teach­ers and prin­ci­pals. Let us fo­cus on the car­ing, com­pas­sion­ate, ded­i­cat­ed and com­mit­ted teach­ers. There are many, be­lieve me! The suc­cess of our schools de­pends on the re­spect. So, once again, re­spect the school, re­spect the teach­ers and re­spect the prin­ci­pal. (This pre­sen­ta­tion was giv­en at a gen­er­al PTA meet­ing on Jan­u­ary 25.)