The RCEF Blog 博客

David Pho, RCEF’s Communications Consultant, wrote the following article, which was part of our June Newsletter.

RCEF helps to organize Parent Meetings at Guan Ai Primary School. This year marked the first time that the school has actively and structurally involved parents in their students’ education. These initiatives allow parents to keep track of their children’s educational and personal developments. So far, three parent trainings have been organized on the following topics: “How to Communicate Better with Children”, “How to Help Children Make Better Use of Holiday Time” and “How to Limit Children’s TV Watching Time.” Last week RCEF organized a Parent Meeting at the school, with a focus on another common parenting challenge: “Limiting Children’s Intake of Junk Food.”

Mrs. Sun Huiguo was one of the Guan Ai teachers responsible for organizing the event. She has over 10 years of teaching experience and teaches Language Arts to 3rd graders at Guan Ai. Sara Lam from RCEF aided her in the preparations to make sure that everything went as planned. Here is brief report based on Mrs. Sun’s feedback and interviews with 2 parents who attended.

Long-distance parenting

Parent meetings are actually quite common in China. However, they are still not a standard practice in rural schools simply due to lack of time and resources. Often, principals and teachers know many parents personally and exchanges take place on an informal basis. This is obviously also effective, but it does not allow all parents to obtain an in-depth understanding of their children’s behavior and needs in school. Rural parents usually do not have time to raise their children since most of them are migrant workers and rarely come home. If the children are not boarding at their school, the task of raising the children is handed over to their grandparents. Mrs. Li Huidie is one such grandparent. She lives in Houjia Village and takes care of her grandchildren—first grader Li Chenxi and a baby boy. Li Chenxi’s parents work in a restaurant in Inner Mongolia. They come back home only once a year.

Mrs. Sun explains: “Most parents do business in the city and the grandfather and grandmother take care of the children but also need to do some farming. It’s very difficult to get in touch with both the parents and grandparents. Because we spend so much time with the children, we discovered that the children have some problems partially caused by being spoiled by their grandparents. In addition, it is difficult for grandparents to educate their grandchildren well because of the generation gap and lack of understanding of children’s needs. This causes the children to develop bad habits. It’s only through talks between the school and these guardians that we can help the children to correct themselves.”

The use of Parent Meetings

The recent meeting consisted of three parts: 1) A presentation by Principal Sun Huimiao explaining the goals of the school and the efforts that the school has made towards these goals in the last few months; 2) A discussion between teachers and parents about how to encourage children to eat fewer snacks and waste less money on junk food; 3) An English class that parents sat in on so that they could see the educational approach of the school in action for themselves.

Traditionally, teachers in China are not only responsible for teaching the standard curriculum, but are also expected to contribute to the moral upbringing of their students. This is especially true in rural China as parents expect teachers to do a large part of the parenting. A 61-year-old grandmother said: “We sent my grandchild to Guan Ai School because the education quality is good. Students learn well and teachers are very responsible. My girl eats well and she likes to come to this school. I expect that my child will perform well and not fight or scold others. I hope that the teachers will be stern and keep her on a tight leash.”

Ms. Sun adds: “It’s only through these parent meetings that we can understand the real situation at a child’s home situation which allows us to take the right action towards him or her. To give you an example: the mother of one of my students is never at home and his grandparents spoil him too much. His mother told me at the meeting that I should teach him well. This gives me permission to do my job well.”
At the meeting, both parents and teachers spoke up about the need to work together to solve common problems like children eating junk food. On the one hand, parents agreed to give their children less pocket money and only enough for school supplies. On the other hand, with the parents’ approval, teachers are happy to assist students in managing their pocket money and keeping an eye out for how it is spent.

Mrs. Li found the parent meeting useful because she received a lot of practical tips about how to raise her grandchild. “I learned a lot about how to deal with her habit of eating a lot of snacks and ice cream. It’s bad for her health and it’s a waste of money! Now the teacher can help me to manage the pocket money so she doesn’t ask me for money as often. She now understands things very well and knows how to use reasoning!” she remarked. She looked surprised as if she did not expect this from a little girl. Another grandmother from Hanyang Village, Mrs. Zhang, added: “After the parent meeting, I was able to have discussions with my granddaughter and didn’t hit her anymore.”

Reaching out to parents

It is still hard to reach most parents so RCEF’s strategy is to involve the most active parents or grandparents from different villages. These representatives can then explain what is going on at the school to their neighbors and spread the word about effective parenting strategies that they learn at the meetings. Mrs. Li suggests putting good manners and hygiene on the agenda of the next meeting. She explains: “Village children are often bad-mannered and should learn good manners like talking politely and greeting elderly people in a proper way. It would be useful to discuss this at the next parent meeting and talk about what the school could do to improve this. Also, hygiene is an important topic.”

Reaching out to the students’ guardians is a huge challenge, since the parents are never at home and many grandparents are illiterate. Sending letters by email or post mail is not very effective, so the school relies on contacting them through the phone or home visits. RCEF recently tested out an online text message service which can help the school to regularly contact and update parents using messages to their mobile phones. More needs to be done to reach other parents and to obtain their active support for the school and RCEF’s work but we are hopeful that this can be achieved.

Be Sociable, Share!

•