By Peter Boon

Teachers who interact well with students’ parents tend to be more successful — Union

SIBU: Teachers who form good partnerships with parents or legal guardians are usually successful when it comes to engaging school-children in classroom activities and also nurturing them towards academic and non-academic excellence.

In this sense, Sarawak Teachers Union (STU) president Macky Joseph believed that continuous and positive interaction between teachers and parents/guardians would benefit the children.

He was responding to Minister of Education, Science and Technology Research Dato Sri Michael Manyin’s suggestion that Sarawak Education Department should encourage teachers to obtain the contact numbers of students’ parents for communication purposes.

Manyin had said this would enable teachers to communicate with parents effectively should problems involving students arise, and suggested that the Education Department in Sarawak issue a circular to all schools, instructing that every teacher must know the mobile number of their students’ parents so that the teachers and the parents could communicate better with regard to issues and problems affecting their children at school.

“The teaching profession serves to educate children, and the parents or guardians form a vital part of the equation. Having said that, teachers who form good partnerships with the parents or guardians are among the most successful when it comes to their work with the school-children.

“Whenever the teachers and parents or guardians work together, the children would receive the message about the value of an education consistently, and they would feel supported and encouraged in their pursuits,” said Macky.

He believes that Manyin’s suggestion had been, more or less, practised through the ‘Class Attendance Registry’.