Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

Keeping up with children, homework, sports, friends, discipline, family-time, relatives and relationships can be overwhelming. There’s hardly a time for another commitment and now the school you are enrolling your child in wants to meet with you regularly throughout the year?

While it sounds like extra work, and one more entry into your calendar, forming a parent-teacher partnership is in fact a method that the PARED schools instill in order to save you time.

James Ramos, Head of Primary, has taught hundreds if not thousands of students in his 20+ years at Redfield College, and has seen the effectiveness that working closely with parents can have on the development of their children.

“One of the things we do early on in Year Two, at the first function where parents come to the school and the class teacher talks to the parents and explains to them about the various routines that we’re going to have during the year or the different programs and how parents can help their children with their homework or with learning their spelling words, etc.”

In the early years of schooling, if the parents can be aware of the types of lessons and approaches that the teachers are taking to teach that child, parents can complement it at home, reinforcing goals and habits, and encouraging their child in a consistent way. A child who is the same at home and at school is already a step in the right direction to forming character.

“For you to sit down for 10 minutes and write down on a piece of paper, the most salient personality traits of your child, that becomes incredibly valuable information for the teacher. So that’s just an example of how it’s not extra work it’s just making the partnership between the parents and the school more effective and more efficient.”

The reality is that parents will know and understand their children far more than the new teacher at school.

“It might take me months to figure out for myself, where your child needs help the most. But you know your child best, therefore, tell me now how I can help your child or tell me now where your child’s strengths and weaknesses are.”