Parents Role in their Child’s Education and Tips to Enhance Children’s Academic Experience at Home.
Parents certainly have a vital role in raising their children. Even though the academic training happens at school. Parents are the one to train and nurture children back at home. In the pre-pandemic times, with regular school, parents could rely on the school for the child's academic growth. Ever since the pandemic has started the role of parents in grooming the child at home for their academics has become increasingly important. There are online classes organised by international schools in hyderabad and other private online learning platforms, but parents still have to contribute their bit in monitoring the child’s academic growth.
A Few Challenges the Pandemic Poses to Parents of Students
1. Parents need to monitor and support the child, to attend online classes or to complete their work tasks from home.
2. Children tend to seek more help from parents to face tests/exams, which tends to become an extra burden.
3. Children, as they are young and active, want to be engaged in activities that bring them joy. Parents have to take out extra time and ensure that the children are productively occupied.
4. Especially for children in higher classes, parents might get over-anxious to understand if their child is preparing in the right path, in order to face future exams and to score well.
Cancellation of Board Exams - A boon?
Multiple Board of Education’s from the country have already decided on cancelling board exams and other sem-final/final exams, and CBSE being the biggest board declaring these, has served as a virtue for many. Children now have no reason to stress out on clearing the board examinations, as respective boards have come up with unique methods of calculating the overall score of a child. This also reduces the burden on the parents who were otherwise uncertain and ambiguous about the dates of the exam and over other such factors.
Now, the parents of these high school students can focus on choosing the right subjects or school for the child’s future education.
Some Points to Remember for Parents of Higher-Secondary Students
1. Recognise the child’s potential and strength, since from here on, subjects choices are narrower and more specialised, the student has to take extra interest and perform well.
2. Parents, as far as possible, should not dominate any decision with respect to a student's career. As these children are of 15+ yrs age, the role of parents in child education it's important they try and understand where their interest lies and think independently on certain choices.
3. The subjects which are to be chosen next, will eventually lead to specialisations in graduation and further studies, which would further shape-up the career. Hence correct guidance from a career counselor would be apt and can help students clear any conflict of interests.
4. Research well about the colleges or schools that you are opting for for your child. Primarily look for criterias like, qualified faculty, adequate infrastructure, recognitions and reviews from credible online portals.
What Can Parents Do to Enhance the Child’s Education Experience at Home?
Figuring this out is the need of the hour. Children can get easily bored and lose motivation to perform their tasks. It is left to the parents as to how they keep their child productively occupied and motivated to perform better in their academics.
1. Keep a tab on your child’s academic progress. Make it a habit to ask your child what they studied in class today and what is the homework for the day. Along with that, discuss their projects and have a healthy and knowledgeable conversation.
2. Ensure that your child is involved in other activities, outside studies, if possible be a part of that. This could be playing board games with your child or watching a movie, involving the child in your daily activities of cooking and teaching them skills like knitting, painting or so on. Ensure that in this activity both you and your child are involved and take out time for this at least 2 to 3 times a week.
3. Have a conversation with the student’s class teacher at least once a month, ask them about your child’s progress and any feedback that they want to give. If they point out something, reflect on the same and ensure that your child brings in the desired change.
4. Take help of visual aid: Since the student is not seeing the teacher in person, the student might miss on certain concepts. Hence ensure that your child takes help of online video and materials that help understand concepts in addition to class work.
5. Restrict the time they spend on laptops or phones. Since classes are conducted online, children are already spending a lot of time in front of the system. Monitor the time they spend on the phone.
6. Ensure your child has a physical regime, this could be yoga, basic exercises at home or walk in the hallway. For them to concentrate on academics, good physical exercise, nutritional diet and sunlight are essential, which help keep healthy, both mind and body.
Conclusion
Times are testing but then there’s always a way out for everything. Parenting is a very sensitive process, a constant learning effort which seeks the right amount of guidance, the right amount of rectifying, the right amount of motivation and the right amount of care and love. All of this should be taken care of and with the right approach. Hence, to enhance the main arena of the child’s life, education, ensure that some special care is taken and adequate time is devoted.
Wishing the best!