Ideally the main objective of a Parent Teacher Meeting should be to create a common platform for both parents and teachers to come together to discuss the children’s performance and to devise and share new methods to enrich the children’s learning experiences.
I have learnt over the years that this is not so. Our schools invite parents, make them sit and listen to a list of events that were organized by the school or are going to be held in the academic year, speeches from the honorable dignitaries and guest speakers. Not sure if communication with parents is on anyone’s mind.
A couple of years ago, during one of our weekly meetings, the objective of linking to a larger community that includes teachers and parents came up for discussion and it was decided that representatives of Bookworm would attend Parent Teacher Meetings scheduled by the schools and talk to the parents, elicit feedback regarding the Libraries in School (LiS) program and envelop the larger community into the circle of encouraging children to read..
The first meeting we attended was a surprise to us as we had assumed that parents would be aware of the children bringing story books home every week. But many parents were unaware of any such library program. We realized that it was critical that we attend PTA meetings and talk to parents about the program and share our expectations with them. If parents were aware of the program, then along with the parents and teachers support, surely we could strengthen the children’s engagement with books in a threefold manner. We attended almost all the PTA meetings last year in our LiS program schools.
This year too, we are attending PTA meetings since the start of the academic year and there was such a marked difference between each school and their view about the importance of the program. Our reflections have left us bewildered as one of our most ardent supporting schools barely gave us time while another somewhat reluctant school, allocated a good 15 minutes to Bookworm and its Libraries in School program. There are a couple of schools that have believed in what we do, right from the beginning and have stood alongside us to promote the importance of reading to parents.
There are many challenges that we face as we have realised that parents see us during the meetings but may not be actually listening and hence may not be internalising how the program could benefit their children. It may also be overwhelming for the parents to engage with something else related to school as a majority of parents struggle with literacy. This is the case for parents but some of the schools also pose a challenge for us as they forget to invite us for the PTA meetings in spite of repeated reminders.
Despite a weekly presence, the library is still coming onto many agendas. However many schools remind us in advance, schedule our few minutes of talk time but we wonder what this presence is impacting. But for us there is a great value in attending these meetings as we can get to interact with the parents at least to some extent and share about our vision and make our presence felt.
