Teachers, parents told to unite

 TEACHERS and parents need to work in unison if students in early childhood education are to develop holistically and become responsible citizens of the country, an educationist says.

Lahara Birdwing School principal Helen Harricknen said this at a meeting held by teachers to inform parents of the programmes they offered and to re-emphasise the schools expectations.

“We believe that having this now at the beginning of the year will allow us to know what is expected of us throughout the year as parents and teachers,” she said.

“If we all have a vision and set expectations, we have something to look forward to and our vision for this school is that we want to produce a generation of children who will be self-starters and life-long learners.

“We want to produce children in a way that they will always have the urge to learn so when you are walking around with them in town and they see something they should ask you questions.

“And you (parents) should be able to communicate in that manner to actually encourage them to learn.

“We also want to produce a generation of children who will naturally feel that they have a purpose in life so they should become very responsible children with an obligation to themselves.

“In other words they should be well-mannered and have a good attitude to life for themselves, their family, the community in which they live in and the country at large.”

Harricknen said it was important for parents and teacher to work together to instil a better mindset among children by helping them do school work properly at home and in class, and focusing more effort on their areas of weakness.

“These are the children of tomorrow and we don’t want to remind them all the time what to do so if this is what we are aspiring to do in school, parents should get them into doing good things at home that will benefit them in the future,” she said.

Harricken said parents are key to children’s learning