The kindergarten years, which are the formative years of childhood, are ideal for children to acquire learning skills such as concentration, comprehension, development of language, belief in values, emotional strength and perseverance. These are all tools that later help complex learning in both academics and life. A comprehensive curriculum in kindergarten would offer time and scope for developing these skills. Ideally, time should be set apart every day for story time. Puppet shows are a good way of telling a story and can be planned once or twice a month.

Puppet shows help in developing and strengthening creativity, imagination and comprehension in children. Children below the age of six live in their imagination. This needs to be cherished. They need to be awakened gently and led calmly towards reality and not pushed into it all of a sudden. Cherishing the dreaminess of children is thus an important task of the kindergarten teacher!

Seetha Anand is a paediatric counsellor and teacher trainer. She can be reached at seethaanand@yahoo.com.

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As parents, we are always advised to spend “quality time” with our children. Most of us react quite strongly and emotionally to advice like that. We feed our children, put them to sleep, bathe them and even sacrifice our likes and needs to be with them. Isn’t that spending enough quality time with our children? Well, with the way things are today, the answer is NO.

Today, parents work long hours or have erratic working schedules, maybe absent from home for several days together due to work-related travel. Although parents take on a punishing work life so as to be able to provide the best for their children it leaves them with little time to actually be with their children.

It is important, therefore, to make the best use of the time we do have. The daily chores that seem routine and mundane to us may actually be the things that our children like doing the best because that is the only time we are together. It is very important that we realise how these things can affect the development of a child. This article discusses the important aspects of spending quality time with children through daily activities.

How do we define this quality time?
The ‘quality time’ we give our children should be a joyous experience for them. It should be time spent fruitfully aiding their development and learning. So does that mean having intellectual discussions with them? Or do we pamper them and show our love by agreeing to whatever they want? No, all we need to do is to interact with our children, listen to them actively, and talk with them, include them in our day-to-day activities, and also involve ourselves in their activities.

How can parents involve children in their daily activities?
Why not let our children help us out in the kitchen, for instance? They could wash vegetables meant to be cut for dinner, even help cut them if they are older; or they could pull out a recipe and keep the ingredients ready for you; they could wipe the washed dishes and put them away. Once you have set them a certain task it is best not to interfere in the way they go about doing it. It may not be the way you would do the same task, it may not be the best way to do it, but leaving them to do a certain task by themselves will give them confidence, will tell them that you trust them and they will eventually learn the best way to do it.

If we do our work with enough involvement and interest we send the right signals to our children for they learn watching us.

Parents’ role in children’s daily activities
Whether it is giving our children a bath or making them a favourite dish we can make these daily activities a bonding experience. All that is required from us is our involvement in what they are doing either physically or through conversation.

These days one of our children’s favourite activities is watching television. Instead of admonishing them for the amount of time they are spending watching television and the kind of programmes they are watching let us sit with them and watch the same programmes, Discuss with them what is being shown on TV. Mutually agreeing on the programmes to watch and not actually dictating terms to them will help them feel responsible for their TV viewing habits.

Influencing children through daily activities
Disciplining and bringing some kind of an order in our children’s lives cannot be left to the school alone. What children learn at home lasts them a life time. For a start, arrange their toy shelf and see that they put back their toys after their play. Initially they may not do it. We may have to put their toys back. But, over a period of time they get used to this order. Making it a habit creates a great sense of order in every aspect of their lives not just in arranging their toys. The best way to help them realise this is to join our hands and be one among them and carry out the tasks.

Daily activities as a means to nurture child’s attitude
One rule of thumb is, the more we try to become authoritative in our roles as their guardians, the more we become responsible, which indirectly makes our children irresponsible. Not being authoritative bridges the gap between children and adults at home. The freedom we give, the respect we show to their choice and the discussions we have to resolve their conflicts help them to shoulder their responsibilities.

In sum, it is important for parents to spend quality time with children. Involve children in everyday activities, using indirect methods of developing interest from within to foster active participation. Treat a child no differently from an adult: give respect and make him/her feel important. And all that is required to bring this joyous as well as learning experience to children through our everyday activities is a little change in our attitudes.

The author is the Founder of the Anubhava Science Centre, Bangalore. She can be reached at geetha.arvind@gmail.com.

Birdwatching can be a pleasurable hobby and is one of the most popular outdoor activities in several countries. It is gaining popularity in our country as well. Almost every major city has a birdwatchers’ group which studies and photographs birds.

Birdwatching need not be a part of a biology class, it can start as a fun activity outside school hours. Slowly, one can draw the children into a more serious study through projects and activities that could make birdwatching a meaningful pastime. Unlike in some of the western countries, we have very little data on the natural history and biology of our birds. It is up to amateurs and individuals to fill in the void from their own observations. I hope this article will help teachers start their children on some projects that are simple to execute but at the same time informative and educative.

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I have failed to understand how in a span of 35 minutes of interaction, one can be a good teacher: a teacher who is supposed not only to teach but to perform multiple roles of a friend, philosopher, guide and caretaker. The B. Ed. teacher training is a course that aims at producing good and competent teachers – an aim that appears very superficial, now more than ever, because the goal is larger and more important than just producing good and competent teachers. One year of hard work and a 35 minute lesson each time…! I relate my own experience:

Poonam was a quiet, dark-skinned girl with an unpretentious smile, and rather small for her age. I met her during a practice teaching session I was required to conduct as a student of B.Ed. At that time Poonam was in standard five. I was taking an English grammar class and the lesson that day was on verbs. I was very happy with the way my teaching session was progressing for I had devised an innovative method to teach the children verbs. The students were having fun and more importantly they were connecting with me. It had been a satisfying session.

As I was leaving, someone spoke from behind, “Teacher, can I have your autograph?” I turned around to find a girl from the class I had just left. I was thrilled to see her hold out a pen and a book. I felt like a celebrity. As I was writing a message for the child I asked her name. “Poonam Jadeja”, she said with that innocent smile on her face. “Are you Punjabi?” I asked instinctively. “Mujhe nahi pata… mein pehle Punjabi thi,” replied Poonam. “What do you mean child? Your surname sounds Punjabi,” I said. “Nahi… mein pehle Punjabi thi. Abhi pata nahi kyun ki mein ab mummy ke saath rehti hoon.” I was dumbstruck.

What was Poonam getting at? I didn’t have the courage to ask her anything further. “Mere mummy-papa alag alag rehte hai… unka divorce hua hai,” she said without any reluctance, perhaps not even knowing what divorce meant at that age. I was crestfallen, my heart broke for that child… but I had another class to take and had to rush. I gave her my autograph with a nice soulful message… this was all I could give her as a teacher!

The image of a young Poonam has remained with me ever since. The two-minute conversation with her had left me feeling that she needed to understand her identity beyond her mother and father. At such a young age, forced to grow up sooner than kids her age, Poonam was facing an identity crisis. She confused her identity as a Punjabi with her parents being together. She believed that only if they were together as a family she was a Punjabi but now that the family was broken up she wasn’t so sure anymore.

This is one type of crisis that is faced by individuals. According to Erickson’s theory of psycho-social development, when there is Identity vs. Role confusion, a person fails to understand his or her identity and confuses his/her roles due to the inability to resolve the crisis. This is just one form, though, and identity crisis and the resulting role confusion can come in many forms. It can be personal or vocational role confusion, or confusion regarding sexual identity and orientation. This last is due to a lack of knowledge about one’s body and this can actually be resolved through sex education, the need and role of which we in India have yet to realise.

Over the years I have progressed from being a teacher to a teacher educator, and Poonam must be around 16 years old now. I don’t know if I can trace her. I hope her crisis has been resolved… but I will always regret not being able to spend another five minutes with her which could perhaps have helped her find an answer to her identity crisis.

A good teacher, I believe, is not just someone who can teach a given subject satisfactorily in the 35 or 45 minutes allotted. A good teacher is someone who can make a meaningful difference to the lives of the children she is teaching.

The author is a teacher trainer at Rizvi College of Education, Mumbai. She can be reached at radhika_143s@yahoo.com.

Accounts of India’s early history usually begin thus:

About 1500 BCE, hordes of semi-barbarian, Sanskrit-speaking nomads called “Aryans” poured from Central Asia into north-west India. There, they came upon the flourishing Indus or Harappan civilisation, whose inhabitants were “Dravidians,” destroyed it and drove the Dravidians southward. Softer versions now propose that the Aryans arrived after the decline of the Indus cities. But either way, they swept across the Indus plains, composed the Vedas over a few centuries, spread Sanskrit and their caste system over India, and built the mighty Ganges civilisation.

That, in a nutshell, is what most “educated” Indians know of their distant past, and is still today presented in most history textbooks as solid knowledge. Yet, the Aryan Invasion theory (or AIT) rests on no evidence. Before we come to that, it is instructive to see briefly how this theory came to be so widely accepted.

The birth of a myth
AIT was propounded in the nineteenth century by European scholars – notably F. Max Müller – as a convenient way to explain deep similarities between Sanskrit and Greek or Latin, which pointed to an ancient link between those languages. But with the British Empire at the height of its glory and Europe as a whole basking in her new-found Enlightenment, those proud scholars could hardly accept that they owed their languages to a benighted India. AIT, on the other hand, allowed India’s new British masters to see themselves as “one more Aryan wave” destined to bring about a “reunion of the great Aryan family” and to bring once more true civilisation to this land. AIT also became a convenient weapon in the colonial arsenal, since it divided Indians into high caste (supposed descendants of the Aryans) and low caste or tribal (supposed descendants of India’s original inhabitants), and also between North and South Indians.

Michel Danino, born in France, has lived in India for 30 years and authored several books on Indian culture and ancient history. One of them, The Invasion That Never Was, was adapted for school and college students in a special edition to be used as non-detailed material which can be obtained from the author, who can be contacted at michel_danino@yahoo.com.

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Upinder Singh’s Mysteries of the Past: Archaeological Sites in India is a guided, instructive tour through the ancient history of the subcontinent. In a journey that stretches from Burzahom in Kashmir to Arikamedu in Pondicherry; from Dholavira in Gujarat to Madan Kamdev in Assam, Singh provides an easy to read account of specific archaeological sites and the lives of the people who lived there.

The book’s language is simple and interactive. Added to this are the little grey boxes in every chapter, containing a question and answer relevant to that particular site, offering a handy and visually appealing way to present often difficult-to-remember facts. The use of photographs and pictures imparts character to the book. Sketches outnumber the photographs by a huge margin, but are done well with a load of detail – good enough to make up for the lack of actual photographs. It might have helped if some of them were in colour, though: that way they could be made more attractive and the aesthetic appeal of the book rise.

At times the book does drag, much like a bus ride (no matter how exciting the destination) can seem to stretch on interminably. Perhaps if Singh had focused a little more on the people of these places, the way they lived rather than on the exact descriptions of the buildings found there, interest could be better maintained. Iron tools, statues and thatched huts, no matter how well described, cannot possibly interest children very long. Singh’s preoccupation with the more material aspects of history is understandable though, considering his book is an archaeological view of the past, and material is precisely the kind of study archaeology is!

Mysteries of the Past: Archaeological Sites in India is an educative and enjoyable book. It opens its readers’ eyes to the many ‘unsung’ relics of the subcontinent’s long history, breaking away from the more conventional formula of Mauryans, Guptas and Chola kingdoms – the normal ‘stuff’ of textbooks on ancient India. It takes the reader on an unforgettable journey, shedding light on a lot that remains hidden, otherwise, in the (seemingly) impenetrable dark of the past. No run of the mill history text, this!

Achala Upendran is studying English literature at St. Stephens College, New Delhi. She can be reached at achala.upendran@gmail.com.

The modern biological sciences whether biotechnology, molecular biology, genetics or cell biology have become increasingly visible in the common public realm through news items, weekly science features in newspapers as well as through films. One frequently hears or reads about criminal or forensic investigations involving DNA tests, Genetically Modified (GM) foods that are produced by modifying food products with some gene or another, cloning of animals, transgenic crops, terminator technology, new recombinant vaccines, stem cell therapies and so on. Or take the Human Genome Project itself and all the coverage it received in the print and television media. Children are consumers of these news items as much as adults and are captivated by movies like Jurassic Park, which talk about cloning an extinct animal from fossil DNA.

All of these developments have served to make DNA into a more ‘real’ and tangible entity than it would have been otherwise! They provide an opportunity to teach the science of DNA by connecting it with larger phenomena. To begin with, DNA can be introduced through the science of genetics thus linking two disciplines that students are exposed to. The train of concepts would be from trait (a character) to gene (a unit that specifies a trait) to DNA (the chemical nature of a gene).

The author is a scientist at the Kallam Anji Reddy Molecular Genetics Laboratory, Prof. Brien A Holden Eye Research Centre, L V Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad. She can be reached at chitra@lvpei.org.

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She was, in my eyes, smart, lonely and (consequently) full of angst – a Muse just waiting to be written about; a person with vibrant, suppressed emotion enough to pose a rival to that immortal governess – Jane Eyre.

She was a brilliant teacher; methodical and involved with her subject, involved enough not to let the seeming disinterest of the students pull her down. It was amazing – she could make the study of literature organised without leaching any of its unruly, ungovernable magic from it. At the end of every lecture, every scene, she’d stop and ask us for our responses, appreciating anything that we had enough evidence to back up.

But none of us knew who she really was, what she was like outside the walls of the classroom. She had the ‘teacher face’ on all the time, sweep past us – barely acknowledging our presence – in the corridors, make a stately exit for the staff room the moment lecture time was over. It was as though she didn’t want us to get to know her.

We respected what we saw as her wishes, most of us not really bothered by it. It’s not as though a teacher is supposed to have the lowdown on your life or you on hers anyway.

For me though, it was strange. Both the schools I’d been in had encouraged an out-of-class relationship between teachers and students; we were supposed to interact with them, talk to them about our problems. I knew I shouldn’t expect that in college, but I wasn’t prepared for a complete about-face.

So, on the last day, after our final exams were done, I decided to talk to her. Considering that she was going to leave for the U.S, and wouldn’t be in college the next year, there was nothing to lose.

Starting was surprisingly simple. I went up to her in the staff room and thanked her for a great year, telling her that I would miss her classes. She invited me to sit down, and then proceeded to ask me how I had liked college on the whole, what I thought of it, and what I was planning to do in my holidays.

It was surprising how easy it was to talk to her. I even managed to tell her how intimidated we had all gotten sometimes, when none of us could manage to come up with anything original. She just laughed and said ‘That happens. I actually wasn’t supposed to teach, I was going to leave earlier this year. Doesn’t the fact that I don’t regret staying back mean something?’

Twenty minutes, or half an hour later I emerged, after promising to keep in touch. My classmates greeted me with curious, faintly scandalised looks. Why on Earth would I want to talk to a teacher right after my exams were done? They listened to my garbled explanation and summary of the conversation then dismissed it with a plea to grab lunch. All thoughts of mysterious teachers were abandoned then.

A month has passed, and emails are in full flow. I wonder sometimes why I didn’t go talk to her earlier, throw up a ladder and reach her in her ivory tower sooner. I like to think that I ‘rescued’ her, gave her some kind of humanity in my classmates’ eyes. Naïve, maybe, but it gives me, a little bit of satisfaction.

Achala Upendran is studying English literature at St. Stephens College, New Delhi. She can be reached at achala.upendran@gmail.com.

From home to school and back, classroom to sports ground and back, and then finally to the examination hall, a child travels various distances to be finally considered “educated”. At home, he or she is subjected to the vigilance of parents and older siblings. At school, there are teachers to make sure he or she pays attention in class. And then there is peer pressure to ensure that education is an on-going process. Indeed the process of education is an education in itself!

The child grows up carrying the burden of report cards, diary notes, and news of parent-teacher meetings where two competing influences come in contact with each other. Sometimes, it’s all pleasant as grades narrate a tale of excellence and hence a reflection on the parental participation in the child’s education. At others, there is the humdrum noise of approval as average performers step forward with their folks to receive a bland accolade. And then there are those moments of agony and panic, confusion and conflict, and blame and denial when teachers and parents debate from opposite sides over a child’s unimpressive plight.

Where does education really begin? Is it at home where the child’s behavior on the outside is interpreted and assessed in terms of inculcation by parents and elders? Or does education actually start at school from scratch, in textbooks and notebooks, through punishments and rewards where one learns to toe a certain line? Or is it the sum total of all these experiences? It’s not an easy question to answer. However, parents and teachers remain the two main actors in a child’s development both at school and at home. Where a teacher-child and child-parent relationship forms the basis for an enriching education experience, the teacher-parent relationship can be vital in enhancing or undermining the two relationships.

How do teachers and parents interact with each other? How closely do they work together in understanding how a child learns and what his or her problems are, whether at school or at home? And how do they perceive each other’s role and involvement in ensuring that a child’s experience is not compromised? What do they expect from each other? Where the answers to these questions may highlight the areas of conflict between parents and teachers, they may also open up the scope for cooperation between them.

The parental point of view
Most parents try to make an informed decision when selecting a school for their children. Their decisions may be based on a careful assessment of various parameters such as academic culture, thrust on extracurricular activities, fee structures, reputation, etc. Minu Mathew from Bangalore whose child goes to India International School says, “Parents expect their child to get the best learning and exposure to both co-curricular and extracurricular activities. Some parents look for a more conventional kind of learning where studies are given prime importance, whereas some others look for overall development”. That is perhaps an average parent’s expectation from a school: to create a learning environment that balances the rigors of academics with participation in extracurricular activities. Prakash Pillai, another parent from Bangalore, whose son attends the St. Joseph’s Boys High School echoes this view, “Personally, I expect the school to create a well-rounded personality of my child. And as this is my most important parameter, I chose to send him to my alma mater, as it does have a reputation as a great incubator for that same parameter”.

But not everyone’s experience of what they expect from a school and what they get is similar. The choice of one’s own alma mater for parents is not uncommon owing to the familiarity of the context and also, trust and faith in the teaching methodology. Suchitra Reddy’s experience, on the contrary, was baffling when she returned from the USA and enrolled her children in her alma mater, “When I first moved back to India, I had no choice but to send my son Nihal, then 8, to my old school. The teachers didn’t seem to know what was really going on with the child. They only focused on academics and neglected most other areas vital in a child’s education”. This was not what her own experience had led her to expect.

She recounts a specific instance that made her change her mind about the school. She said, “Nihal often didn’t want to go to school. I spoke to the teachers but they said he was doing fine and there was no problem. He would not tell me what was going on. Eventually, I found out that he was completely ostracized by his classmates because he had a different accent. Every time I’d speak to the teachers they’d say there is no problem and that he was doing absolutely fine”.

Such experiences can alienate both parents and children. In such situations, it’s imperative that parents and teachers communicate so that they get to the root of the problem. While one cannot wholly put the onus on teachers, parents’ concern and consequent bewilderment can cause unexpected conflicts between the two. Eventually, Reddy withdrew her son from the school and enrolled him elsewhere.

Thus emerges another important question. What do schools, and by extension, teachers expect of parents? Do they see their role as one of collaboration? Or is too much collaboration seen as interference?

From the teacher think-tank
There is often a mismatch of expectations on both sides. And lack of communication or even miscommunication can often aggravate the situation. While parent’s expectations of the teacher may be more specific, teachers do expect a basic amount of involvement and participation in routine matters related to children’s education.

Sonja Dutta, who teaches Economics at Vidyaranya High School in Hyderabad says, “There is not much interaction between the parents and teachers here in Vidyaranya, compared to other schools. Meetings only happen once or twice a year. Very few parents are as involved, and only when the academic performance of their children is not up to the mark. They do express their desire to meet more often and also take down telephone numbers but rarely ever follow up.”

Dutta’s complaint is based on the fact that parents these days have little time to spend with children. Where both parents work, it becomes even more difficult to prioritize spending time with them.

Minu Mathew expresses her inability in this regard, “I would like to enhance the learning provided by the school by reviewing whatever is taught at school. But I just don’t get the time to do it”. While others like Prakash Pillai involve themselves in the “bigger picture”. “My involvement in my son’s education is mostly on a day-to-day basis. I attend parent-teacher meetings and school events, make sure he has all the books he needs, and also the uniform”.

Then there are those parents who keenly participate in their children’s work given at school and involve themselves in the micro details of what they learn. Vijay and Sadhana Ramchander share the ways in which they work with their children. “We are pretty involved in our children’s activities. We usually talk to them after school and ask them what they did in class, or whether they have any doubts. We also help them with projects and direct them to sources of information”.

So clearly, there are different degrees of involvement on parents’ part with their children’s education. But does this involvement translate into creating a more enriching education experience for children? Do parents and teachers want different things from the child? And what happens when they negotiate what they want?

The curricular circularity
Lakshmi, a Vidyaranya teacher and also a parent, explains the difference in expectations, “Teachers are interested in the holistic development of the student but parents are more interested in completion of syllabus and projects”.

Undoubtedly, academics are a major area of concern for most parents. The obsession over grades and marks is almost universal among most Indian parents who are worried about the future career choices of their children. They go to great lengths to ensure a competitive performance, one that would earn their child a seat in a good engineering or medical college.

Simi Nagi, Vice Principal, Pallavi Model School, Hyderabad, notes the trend in parents involvement in her school, “I’ve noticed that there is more involvement in growing stages that is classes 1 to 6. Parents get deeply involved. They read the remarks written by the teacher and pay attention to the weak subjects of the child. But when you come to classes 7 and 8, slowly that interest starts fizzling out. You’ll see that they are not very interested. Maybe they feel that the children are grown up and the onus lies on the teacher. You can also say that they are getting more career-oriented. And by the time children reach class 10, if we have 30 students in a section, hardly 10 parents come to collect the report card. And the 10 who come are not interested in the remarks written by they teacher. They only want to see the marks.”

Marks, indeed are the overriding concern. But Simi Nagi makes a further distinction: “They are only interested to see marks in Mathematics and Science. They are not bothered if the child has not done well in Social Sciences or language skills. Basic communication skills… Hindi, English, Telugu… they are not bothered!”

Undeniably, academic performance as assessed through grades and percentage points cannot be overlooked by most parents when the predominant sentiment is to pick out careers way in advance and then guide the academic course accordingly. Even though it’s an imposition of personal aspiration on the child, it has been a traditional practice – beginning as soon as the child starts school. Of course we all answered those “What do you want to be when you grow up?” questions very early on in our school life. And often the raised hands were divided between aspiring doctors and wannabe engineers without a complete realization of what it actually means to be one.

Anna Joseph, a biology teacher at Vidyaranya School observes, “Parents try to push their children into a particular career path and they get very competitive. But they forget what the philosophy of this school is”. Vidyaranya is among the few alternative schools that do not use examinations to assess the performance or potential of a student. Sonja Dutta agrees that the school is an exception when it comes to teaching methods and assessment but few parents really understand this departure.

Naina Joseph, who also teaches at Vidyaranya, feels that parents are not able to understand their child’s talent and offer guidance accordingly. She relates the case of a girl student, “There was this girl who was a very good tennis player. She often skipped classes and whenever she attended them, she was mostly lost. The parents’ attitude was to just acquire the tenth grade pass certificate for her. But when the girl was asked what she wanted, she revealed she did not want to get into competitive tennis. She is now pursuing Science in order to get into medicine.”

While for some parents academics are of paramount importance, there are others who prefer an approach that makes learning more application-oriented and not just confined to textbooks. Vijay Ramchander, for instance, advocates using a more practical approach to learning. He says, “I’d like to see more lab work through the use of models to teach science. It would really help the children to understand various scientific concepts.”

Others like Suchitra Reddy and Vinita chose Waldorf schools for their children but are not entirely happy with the school’s approach to teaching. Suchitra Reddy narrates another incident where her younger son’s class section was changed, and as a result of which, he lost all his friends. When she took up the issue with teachers, their response did not indicate any serious concern. She critiques the philosophy of Shloka, a Waldorf school in Hyderabad, “The Waldorf philosophy puts the child first but I find that it’s only partly applied. The problem is that the teachers are not trained to be so. There is a common pool of teachers that keep circulating among schools. Even some of the Waldorf teachers are from the mainstream system and they undergo some training program and become teachers. Most of them don’t have professional teaching degrees”.

Another parent, Vinita, whose son also goes to Shloka, finds their methods slightly hard to implement, “The teachers feel that academic concepts should be taught through alternative methods like storytelling. The parents should not yell at children or punish them. This is sometimes inconvenient as it is not always possible to deploy those methods”.

While some parents like Vijay, Suchitra and Vinita try to involve themselves in the details of education at school, how do the teachers feel about such a level of involvement? Do they perceive it as an encroachment on what is professionally their domain? Or do they encourage such participation without misgivings about the parents’ expertise?

Conflict and collaboration
Manju Gupta, Principal, Pallavi Model School, sees parental involvement as essentially collaborative and says, “We have an open door policy. Parents can meet teachers any time during the school time. We encourage them as far as possible to get involved in not just academic matters but also other school related issues”.

Jasveer Kaur, a Hindi language teacher at the same school comments on the kinds of issues parents raise, “They usually take up subject-related issues like Hindi spelling and handwriting. And when we give them feedback, some parents do work closely with their children to improve weak areas. And I think often the results are visible”.

Others like Naina Joseph feel a little more strongly about parental involvement, “There are certain areas where the teacher knows better and she should put her foot down and ask them firmly yet politely to not interfere”.

Meenakshi, a pre-school teacher from Mumbai, deals with parents on a more frequent basis, “I receive a number of complaints from parents. Especially from the ones who sit in class with their child. I remember this mother who would sit in class, and ask why we didn’t sing a particular song or do a particular activity on a given day. As a teacher I think I know my job and such interference is totally uncalled for. I feel that parents shouldn’t send their children to school at a young age, if they have so many issues”.

But then confl icts are ineluctable. Beyond academics, there are attitude and behaviour related issues that can turn serious and are not easily resolved.

Manju Gupta recalls a case of a new student in Pallavi Model School who had teething problems in the new school, “This girl had come from Chirec School, which happens to be a rather elite school. This girl was not able to adjust or make friends with anyone in the school. Since she was used to more facilities and infrastructure, she could not cope here. Later when she made friends, she started turning them against each other. Her mother would not admit her fault and was insistent that the school was negligent of her needs. This went on for a long time, and eventually the girl fi nished and left the school”.

Sonja Dutta was faced with a diffi cult situation when a girl in her class who had a crush on a boy wrote his name on her wrist using a blade. She was rushed to the hospital and the class teacher was blamed for the unfortunate incident. “Parents have an important role to play in a child’s development, especially in personal areas like relationships”, says Dutta.

While it’s difficult to clearly demarcate the roles to be played by teachers and parents, a collaborative relationship is possible and necessary. Conflicts arise perhaps due to the way parents and teachers view each others’ role in facilitating a child’s overall development. And without doubt, conflict resolution is the key to a more collaborative approach.

Lakshmi, whose daughter goes to a boarding school offers a unique role for parents, “If parents and teachers work as a team, many difficulties can be solved. Parents who work as professionals in different fields can visit schools and offer career-related advice to students”. Simi Nagi from Pallavi Model School on the other hand, believes in working with parents especially in nurturing special talents of the students. She says, “If we see that the child is good at quizzing, singing, or dancing, we inform the parents and ask them to work with us to hone their special talents”.

Anna Joseph feels that parents’ participation in children’s school life can help foster a work ethic in an alternative education system where the methods of assessment are different.

Manju Gupta, points out, “Both parents and teachers are on the same team. They are not working against each other. Hence a collaborative relationship can do wonders in improving the child’s schooling experience”.

However Vinita takes into consideration the practical constraints of collaboration, “There should be a distinction between areas teachers should address and those that parents should address as far as the children’s education is concerned. But then there is a lack of clear boundary between these issues as a lot of the parents are teachers themselves”.

Naina Joseph insists on involving the children in parent-teacher parleys to rule out any suspicion of a conspiracy on the child’s part. She thinks that if parents and teachers are meeting too often, then the child may get nervous and anxious as to the frequency of interaction. Hence he or she must be involved and kept in the loop so that he or she knows what’s going on.

Conclusion
So parents can be teachers while teachers also often play the role of a parent. Expertise is a matter of training oneself and while there remain some exclusive areas that either can address, collaboration can iron out kinks to a large extent. For instance, teachers can work with parents on evolving innovative methods to explain certain concepts if the latter has the knowledge and the resources. Parents could widen their range of interest in their children beyond academics by talking to them about relationships, involving them in routine decision-making and treating them as growing adults. Overlooking the fact that the child is always the primary focus of parent-teacher relationships can defeat the entire purpose of collaborating.

There is perhaps also a need to realign expectations on both sides in order to make communication more intelligible. This can be facilitated through more avenues for parent-teacher interaction. Where teachers are often accessible in schools, a greater effort is required from the parents’ side to make time to visit the school beyond the regular frequency of PTAs and school events. A general awareness of what’s going on in children’s life without causing any undue intrusion can go a long way in building a mutually productive collaborative between parents and teachers.

Ways to create the Parent-Teacher interface

• Group meetings of parents and teachers, class-wise
• One-on-one parent-teacher conferences
• Open house days when parents can walk around the school, look at children’s work, talk to teachers informally
• Parent volunteers for academic and extracurricular activities
• Parent liaison volunteers who help the school deal with various external agencies
• Guest lectures of assembly talks by parents
• Information boards to update parents and visitors about school activities
• Class newsletters from teachers to parents
• “Parent report cards” where parents can give feedback on homework and projects that children do at home
• Parent facilitators for different areas – lunch, playground, sports field, library
• Parent potluck – this can be for sections of the school, so that it doesn’t get too unwieldy
• Teacher-Parent socials – getting to know each other outside the classroom

How learning happens at home

Vijayalakshmi Ramsai

A child’s success in school strongly correlates with parental involvement, and about one half to two thirds of the variance in students’ achievement is accounted for by home variables rather than school variables.

Let us look at the role that parent involvement programs can play, and how in future we can help to meet the changing needs of school students and their families.

Parental involvement can be broadly classified as under:

1. Traditional (parent as audience)
2. Decision makers
3. Parents as classroom volunteers
4. Paid paraprofessional or teacher’s aide
5. As learners
6. As teachers of their own children
7. Parent as home activities teacher.

Now, “How exactly does this work?” is the question from all parents!

Based on my seven years of teaching experience I can summarize it as under:

For the age group 3 to 5 years
An infant can look at pictures, listen to a parent’s voice and point to objects. Guide the child and say the name of the various objects. Children love to listen to the sounds of language before they even notice the existence of printed words. Reading books aloud to children stimulates their imagination and expands their understanding of the world. When the rhythm and melody of language become a part of a child’s life learning to read will be as natural as learning to walk and talk.

For the age group 6 to 9 years
When parents help their children learn they open the door to a new world. All children have two wonderful resources for learning – imagination and curiosity. As parents, we have to awaken our children to the joy of learning by encouraging their imagination and curiosity.

For example you and your child can; sort socks on laundry day – sorting is a major function in math and science. Cook a meal together – cooking involves not only math and science but good health as well. By doing such small things we can show that learning is fun and important.

For the age group 10 to 13 years
In this age group we can lay the foundation for becoming a life long reader.

• Read with your child and make this all important time together enjoyable.
• Stimulate your child’s interest in reading language.
• Learn about child’s school reading programs and ways to help

For the age group 14 years and above
There should be lot of comprehensive programs wherein schools should involve parents in a variety of roles. The program should be designed to

• Help parents develop skills and foster conditions at home that support learning.
• Provide parents with the knowledge of techniques to assist children in learning at home.
• Promote clear two-way communication between school and children’s progress.
• Support parents as decision-makers.

Home based involvement
This can be done in a number of ways, and two relatively easy methods are as follow:

• Regular home visit by a trained paraprofessional or a school teacher, particularly in cases where children are uncommunicative and seem to have learning difficulties.
• Carry home assignments to parents – this might include information on school events/learning opportunities / suggestions for helping students.

Parents need to be educated as to the importance of their role in education. Many parents need to be disabused of the idea that the school is the domain of the teachers and that school alone is the place for education. Learning is an experience which happens both at school and at home.

Top 5 concerns – Teachers

1. Not enough parental involvement beyond academics
2. Need to identify areas of behaviour improvement among children
3. More trust on teachers than external tutors
4. Need to distinguish own aspirations from children’s
5. Parental involvement in talking about personal relationships

Top 5 concerns – Parents

1. More individual attention in class
2. Practical learning and teaching methods
3. More professional training for teachers
4. Food/Transport/Uniform
5. Discipline

Teachers and community organisations are concerned for a variety of reasons, ranging from difficulty in handling the CBSE curriculum and the shortage of textbooks to the inappropriateness of merging primary and secondary schools. Clearly, the government order was conceived without proper consultation with key partners in the process – teachers and communities where the order is to be implemented.

Teachers who have for years been teaching subjects from the State board perspective now have to change their approach to accommodate the CBSE’s different approach. Many of them are simply not equipped to handle the subjects in English medium, nor are the children from contexts where English is commonly used. The move may be seen as well meaning, as it aims to take a step toward bringing all government schools in the country under a common framework, but the process and pattern of implementation could do with a more widely consultative approach.

Teachers, as the main elements in the delivery of this new strategy, need to be empowered with training and tools – before the implementation, not post-hoc, as seems to be the case now. We need to think of ways in which teachers can participate in such policy shifts, not just as passive recipients of policy, but as active shapers of it.