Towards a Collaborative Home-School Partnership

When was the last time you participated in your child's school activity or met your child's teacher? What kind of relationship do you have with your child's teacher?

Extensive research studies have shown irrefutable evidence that a positive parental involvement is necessary for school success. Parent-teacher relationship is one of the most important contributing factors to a child's success at school. However, investing in parent-teacher relationship is a two-way process, which require parent-teacher collaboration. In such a relationship, parents and teachers share the commitment and responsibility for educating the child, ensuring optimal growth and development.

So, how is such collaboration established? One of the basic ingredients for ensuring a successful and productive parent-teacher collaboration is trust and respect. Parents need to show teachers respect, listen to their point of view, exhibit flexibility and find compromises whenever possible. In addition to trust and respect, a successful parent-teacher relationship is also established through open and frequent communication. Both teachers and parents share equal responsibility for creating such a foundation. Many teachers find parents intimidating and uncooperative, thus are apprehensive and reluctant to initiate interactions. Parents, on the hand may interpret such reservations as unfriendly and unapproachable, resulting in a conflicting parent-teacher relationship.

To ensure a productive parent-teacher relationship, parents and teachers need to accept the child holistically in the context of the home and the school. When both parties are uncooperative in investing in the partnership, the child is segmented into the school child and the home child, ignoring the whole child. While educators need to understand and appreciate the home context as an important and critical part of the child's life, parents should also share and support educators' efforts in educating the child. Ultimately, parents and educators should bear in mind that the result of a positive parent-teacher relationship is optimal growth and development for the child.