You can help your child’s teacher

Press, 30 January 1986, Page 16

You can help your child’s teacher

“We believe that where we can work with parents, our work with students is more positive,” says David Matthews of Burnside High School. It was this conviction that education is a three-way partnership between teacher, student and parent that led him and fellow guidance counsellors to set up Burnside’s “working together” programme nine years ago.

“The partnership aspect has not had as much attention as it should have,” he maintains. “There are some real barriers between home and school. Many parents’ own school experiences were not positive, and they only come to school when there are problems and they are summoned. “A teacher’s training is concentrated on what goes on in the classroom, with very little on relations with the family. Some teachers have problems relating to parents, especially if they are from different cultural or social backgrounds. Other teachers feel under seige: they feel schools are being expected to solve society’s ills.” The Burnside approach is to try and reduce these barrriers by bringing parents into the school, and showing as much interest in them as in their students, he says. The programme was triggered by a series of workshops to encourage parents to discuss the nature and content of human development and relationships courses. The results far exceeded their expectations. “The overwhelming message was that parents felt the need for help themselves,” says David Matthews. "They seemed to appreciate what the school was attempting to do in the human relationship area for their teenagers but felt that this could widen the com-

munication gap at home, as their children might be better equipped ih human relationships skills and understanding than they would be.” This need became the focal point of the Working with Parents programme. The core of the programme is a series of workshops on the specific needs of parents of teenagers. By bringing together groups of parents who share common concerns, parents are helped to gain a greater insight into what is happening within their own unique family system, the Working Together team believes.

“There are no right or wrong answers to parent-

ing,” says David Matthews, “only solutions that fit that family at that time.” He feels that parents gain in confidence as they hear others describe similar situations to their

own and ways of coping with a variety of problems.

“The programme starts from where parents are at and helps them to understand and achieve their goals,” he says. In this way it is quite different from the other approach often tried by schools which emphasise giving

information and fitting parents into the system.

Whilst communication skills are the back-bone of all workshops, over the years the programme has developed to cover specific topics suggested by parents. They now offer up to 15 workshops a year. A typical year’s programme will include educational workshops such as starting high school, study and homework skills, and reading difficulties; vocational workshops on career decisions, job-seeking skills, and unemployment; family workshops on parenting skills, one parent families, blended families and adoptive families, and

“Parents felt the need for help themselves”