Banner: Teachers speaking at the 2017 Global Education & Skills Forum in Dubai, UAE
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BY THE TEACHER TASK FORCE ON THE ROLE OF PARENTS IN BLENDED LEARNING
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How can teachers work with parents to ensure children keep learning during COVID-19? This document makes some key suggestions for teachers, based on a series of discussions with teachers from all around the world.
1. Inform
- Establish channels of communication with parents to share information with them. Make phone calls, message through networking sites, write emails or letters. Talk to parents regularly and tell them about the work that teachers do to help build a relationship based on trust and mutual understanding.
- Inform parents about how teachers in their child’s school are trying to keep children learning. Sharing information will make them less anxious and open to collaborating with educators.
- Tell parents how they can support their child in effectively continuing their education at a distance, such as by creating multimedia tutorials.
- Create a ‘one-stop’ platform for parents to keep them informed about all the learning activities, assignments and various distance teaching tools used by their child’s teachers/school.
2. Invite
- Encourage parents to talk about their concerns and fears openly with educators.
- Organise workshops for parents to teach them the use of online learning tools and encourage them to join.
- Invite parents to group activities where they can socialise with other parents and form support groups (such activities may be online to maintain social distancing, where required).
- Ask parents if they want to support activities undertaken by schools other than learning, like food distribution to the needy students.
- Host group calls with parents on weekends to exhibit the creative talent of their children, showing them how their child and others in their class are progressing.
3. Involve
- Engage parents in the learning process by creating family activities with easy to follow instructions, defined role for the participants and a time frame to complete it.
- Assist parents in creating a learning environment at home, making suggestions about how to create an effective space for studying and a practical daily routine of study.
- Where possible, involve school counsellors in meetings with parents and extend them avenues of psychological help.
- Include parents in evaluating the work of their children at home.
The Teacher Task Force on The Role of Parents in Blended Learning
In July 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 global pandemic, the Varkey Foundation established a Teacher Task Force on ‘The Role of Parents in Blended Learning’. The Task Force comprised of teachers, all Global Teacher Prize Ambassadors, from 19 countries. Their experiences of collaboration with parents shed global insight on the issue of parent-teacher partnership.
CO-CHAIRS
- Peter Ferris UK
- Ken Silburn AUSTRALIA
MEMBERS
- Linanh Anyango KENYA
- Muhammad Nazir bin Amir SINGAPORE
- Nathan Atkinson UK
- Marjorie Brown SOUTH AFRICA
- Melissa Collins USA
- Elisa Guerra Cruz MEXICO
- Ranjithsinh Disale INDIA
- Xuxo Ruiz Dominguez SPAIN
- Michael Dunlea USA
- Joe Fatheree USA
- Wu Rongjin CHINA
- Maina Gioko KENYA
- Anh Phuong Ha VIETNAM
- Nataliia Kiseleva RUSSIA
- Marie-Christine Ghanbari Jahrami GERMANY
- Thejane Malakane KENYA
- Soji Megbowon NIGERIA
- Jeff Remington USA
- Silvana Andrea Carnicero Sanguinetti ARGENTINA
- Cristina Simoes PORTUGAL
- Dayang Suriani INDONESIA
- Katarina Veljkovic SERBIA
- Sindey Carolina Bernal Villamarin COLOMBIA
- Melinda Wilson USA