Challenges in Parental Involvement

This past year has definitely been marked by its ups and downs. For some reason, it’s so much easier to remember the downs. Knowing this, the least we can do is take some of these downs as challenges and from them take away any lessons we can.

Challenges for Short Term Vision of getting parents more involved

Note: The challenges regarding short term vision seem to be defined by groups of people.

One such challenge I faced was getting teacher support. When I spoke to teachers about the parents’ group, they told me it would never work. When I asked for their help, they staunchly resisted. I took this all very personally. The biggest problem was that they did not take me very seriously – to them I was a young girl who could not speak Hindi fluently. I had no credibility. Trying to work with teachers by myself would be difficult. I realized that this was natural. Ironically, my new project is working mainly with teachers. But this time, I will enlist the help of other NGOs and organizations. You have to pick your battles. My focus is teacher development and training, not getting them to respect me and take me seriously.

The next challenge I faced was getting parents interested in what I was doing. Every time I went to a child’s house, the parents (I mostly interact with mothers) would say that their child needed to study more and then would direct the conversation completely social. I recognized this as the mothers being lonely. In fact, many times mothers would tell me to come during the day because they were home alone and wanted to talk. Because it was so difficult to get parents to talk about what their children needed to work on or about how the kids should study, the house visits did not have the value I had hoped for.

Another big challenge I faced was how to interact with my students. Their first impression of me was decided the day of the cricket match – I was a fun didi, not a teacher. So when I entered the classroom, it was crucial for me to define my role in their lives. I chose didi. Although the kids liked me, class room time was frustrating. They would stand up in the middle of class and ask about cricket – a subject that had nothing whatsoever to do with what he had discussing. Furthermore, I feel that they got too comfortable with me; to the point that they were taking me for granted.

One story that was especially disheartening: I had lent my bicycle to one of my students. He had promised to return it in a few days. A few days passed and he still had not returned the bike. I decided to go to his house. His sister was visiting from her in-laws’ house. After getting my bike back, she invited me inside. Then she asked me, “Didi, why didn’t you give my brother a charger for the mp4 you gave him?” I had never given her brother an mp4 (essentially an mp3), but someone had taken mine a few months back during one of the cricket matches. I immediately started drilling the sister and brother about it: “what color is it?” “how did you get it?” “when did you get it?” The brother was very stubborn and continued to insist that I had given it to him.

In the end, I got my bike and my mp3 player back. And my flashlight back. But the entire experience was so disheartening. I had never raised my voice when I spoke with the kids. I played with them. But at that point, I realized that I it would be very difficult to be their didi and their teacher at the same time.

There are numerous other occasions in which kids have realized that they can take advantage of me. In response, I have become more firm over the past year. I’ve noticed that the kids are not as eager to come and play with me, and I do miss them. But I think, as their teacher, I need to stand my ground.

Challenges to the Long Term Vision of Improving Education in Bagar

When I first arrived in Bagar, I was really confused about what I could do. There are so many schools in Bagar, most children go to school, and most people were satisfied with the quality of education. I did not sense a demand for change. But I saw a need a for change. Much of the education in Bagar was not resulting in jobs; the teaching quality was poor; children did not see any value in going to school.

As we started telling people what we were doing here, many people in response to my working in the education sector said that education in Bagar was not lacking. If I wanted to do anything, they told me, I should teach English. I was against this for a few reasons: (1) I knew there was value in learning English, but I felt it was important to create the message that Hindi and Marwari were just as valuable (2) I felt I had not come here to teach English. My parental involvement project did not seem as compelling to them as the possibility of learning English. It was partly because of this that I decided to not focus so much on parental involvement.

I still am not teaching English, but I am in the process of trying to find a quality English teacher. By doing this, I am still free to continue trying out other projects and at least one of the community’s demands will be met.