Indispensable role

Dyna P. Enriquez

NOW, more than ever, our students’ parents will play a vital role in their children’s learning. With the pandemic disrupting our school system, parents can no longer afford to be passive. Life as we know it has completely gone upside down, with schooling now mostly home-based.

It is of great importance that parents be supportive of their kids, allotting time to make sure various school tasks are accomplished. Whether we like it or not, this pandemic has forced our hands. Parents must become the teachers. It will be hard, but is needed, to give our students some sense of normalcy in education.

Here in our country, most parents’ roles in education stop at the gate of the school. We are so used to just handing our kids over to schools for learning and nothing more. That being the culture, it will be a great challenge to parents.

Even without this pandemic, it is already a problem for our schools to ask our parents to come and participate in school-initiated activities. So we could only imagine how tall an order it is to ask them to now play the role of a teacher at home.

Asking parents to be teachers at home, entails a lot of problems. Financially, most parents will not have the means to provide proper education at home. Providing them the space needed to study will be hard, for most live in an already crowded and limited space.

We also can no longer turn a blind eye to the importance technology will play in our students’ education. Being a developing country, very few infrastructures are in place to aid our school system. In this day and age, internet connectivity is already a must-have in this pandemic notwithstanding. And contrary to popular belief, most Filipinos are without internet access.

We must all come together as a community to overcome the obstacles this pandemic has brought upon us. Teachers and parents should work hand-in-hand in learning delivery. Let us become partners in our students’ learning.

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The author is Master Teacher I at Manibaug Paralaya Elementary School,

Porac East District