By: Raymond R. Gozos, Teacher III
Mabitac Integrared National High School
Both educators and parents play key roles in the academic achievement of students. For students to succeed in school, the learning environment must be supportive, motivating, and filled with high-quality instruction. Family involvement in the student’s education begins at home with the parents providing a safe and healthy environment, adequate learning experiences, support, and a positive attitude about school.
Through years of being an educator, this is one of the most effective solutions to aid my teaching-learning process in the subject taught which most of my students find difficult to learn — Mathematics. Don’t get me wrong, most of my students are interested in learning all the concepts especially when I explain to them in front of the class; however, when they are asked to apply these ideas on their own, most of them just get lost.
Learning the basics and foundation of Math is a must for one to be able to advance to the next levels of this subject. For this reason, parents have to be involved in their children’s learning progress in Mathematics through informing them of the good attitudes of my students, then following with the parts that they need to improve on. We then sought help from the parent/ guardian to reinforce these skills that still needed to be learned by their child at home. By simply involving children in a family budgeting, a habit of buying at a convenient store or even calculating shares of viand on the table, nor getting the ratio of water and rice in cooking. These are fundamentals of Mathematics which are significant in solving more crucial problems.
Recent research implies that more parental participation contributes to enhancing the degree of children’s psychological well-being. Children have a greater chance to succeed in school and have better psychological and social development. Parental engagement enhances student performance, self-esteem, and attitude. It also helps to build strong relationships between parents and their child’s school.
By providing our learners’ parents with progress reports with data about how their child is performing in math, they become aware what are the things that have to be done. By including them in the teaching-learning process, our learners would be able to make meaningful learnings that they could use in their daily life activities. As teachers, we could give math-related awards during quarterly meetings which could further encourage our learners and parents to develop their children’s math abilities at home.
Yet, this can be a hit or miss for most students. Upon looking closely at students’ habits and their varied socio-economic status, some factors might be of that greatly affect their learning habits. From poor time management, attitudes, and interests, there is often no middle ground, and this makes it a difficult subject for teachers to teach. The persons they are with when they go home could look closely, reinforce, and improve on these matters.
Student success isn’t merely measured in grades. It’s also found in the degree of participation that their children have in the classroom and their enthusiasm to gain knowledge and try so hard. As teachers, we can show the parents of our children how much progress their child is making by letting them view the quiz notebooks/papers of our students, along with their significant notes on learning.
This is because parents’ engagement inspires and motivates children to learn, resulting in better grades. The level of participation is crucial in having a significant impact on the performance of the student. The parent’s level of involvement has a bigger influence on the child’s academic performance. A parent’s involvement in their children’s education leads to increased academic success and the development of a lifelong love of learning. The earlier parents involve themselves in their children’s education the stronger the foundation created will be for their child’s future academic success.
For our dear parents, your involvement and participation not only in quarterly/follow-up meetings are vital. Through this, your questions and observations regarding your child’s efforts and behavior, not only their grades and accomplishments will be relayed and could help your child to be encouraged more in learning better. Teachers and parents must know the child’s strengths and needs, preferences, and dislikes, and what they hope he or she achieves in our class or life.
Parent–child educational discussions, parental encouragement and support for learning, valuing school accomplishments, and the reinforcement of learning at home were all found to be positively associated with school achievements for children in school and beyond. As Math teachers, let us continue to become partner with our student’s parents/guardians to help our students become better by cultivating effective partnerships with significant people in their lives.
