Having been involved in my children’s Parents and Teachers Association (PTA), I’ve had the pleasure of being able to look in on the lives of this great institution we call the school and also to gain a better understanding of what school teachers are faced with every day. The one thing I immediately picked up on is that teachers go above and beyond what their job descriptions require of them and therefore truly deserve what the rest of us view as extended holidays.

A lot of marking goes on during the school holidays for instance, so schoolteachers’ holidays aren’t as long as what the rest of us believe them to be.

Teachers also usually assume the role of a parent during school hours, having to look after up to 30 or more learners all with minds of their own in some cases. Lots of parents do nothing to really help the situation, essentially shifting full responsibility to the school in the morning when they’ve dropped off their kids or when their kids have left for their morning commute to school. That’s not how it should be. Even if your child goes to the most prestigious and priciest private school, you should still take an interest in their education.

You might even learn something yourself as times have changed and are changing ever faster in this day and age. You don’t have to work through the entire curriculum with them, but there are some ways through which you can get involved.

Help them with their homework

Well yes, this might mean that you have to read through that little introduction of each textbook chapter and work through examples to understand what’s going on so that you can then explain to your child how it’s done, but that’ll likely only happen occasionally. I mean this should only really happen if he or she really didn’t understand as it was explained to them in class and they’ll definitely be receptive to the fact that it’s quite an effort for you to essentially have to “go back to school” each time you’re called upon to do some explaining.

Otherwise, you should definitely offer up your help to guide them through some of their homework and you should never try to come across as if you know all the answers. “Let’s find out by searching online” is perhaps a good go-to action for when you can’t quite figure it out yourself as well, but what it also does is relay to your child that the internet can, in fact, be used for what it was perhaps originally intended for — getting useful information.

Rewards and reports

There’s also nothing wrong with offering up rewards for outstanding work as this fosters the belief that outstanding work does indeed get rewarded in the “real world”. So as far as is within reason of course, perhaps some prize money can be put up for grabs for any child who maybe scores an A++ on any test or maintains an extraordinarily high percentage on their average year mark. Improvement should also be rewarded as that fosters a desire to constantly become better.