Parenting Advice

Parenting Advice: Check your kid's school work Every day your child goes to school lugging a backpack. They have folders, papers, artwork etc in their backpack. They come back and bring stuff they have done in school. If we don't look through the back pack and look at the papers the art work they do we will not know what is going on in their lives. My parents did a great thing for me because they looked at my note books. My parents moved from a state in India called Maharashtra to a state called Kerala where my parents are originally from. My parents were both born in Kerala while I was not. After I finished second grade in a school in Rasayani we moved to Kerala and joined St. Teresa's as a third grader. Malayalam is the language of the state of Kerala and Marathi is the language of Maharashtra. When we reached Kerala I knew very little malayalam. In the school I studied I joined English medium and could learn all subjects in English but had Malayalam as my first language. The syllabus followed by St. Teresa's had very high standard for malayalam. In third grade the teacher wrote entire questions and answers on the black board. We were to copy it into our notebooks. I did not know to write malayalam. I struggled to form the alphabets into my notebook. I did not know to tell the teacher. The kids around me were happily and furiously writing along. Their pages were full of neatly written malayalam sentences questions and answers. My parents may have checked my book and saw I had only written a few alphabets in the top of the page and nothing else. The next thing I know is my parents talking to the principal, the class teacher and finally I had to go to 1st grade during malayalam period. I a third grader sat with first graders and learned malayalam alphabets. I learned fast and next year had no problem in studying fourth grade malayalam. I did not have to work through second or third grade again. This tells us the importance of parents looking through kids school work. Kids are not always able to articulate the problems they face. If parents look through the kids school books and stay involved it is helpful.