The second S1-S5 Parents’ Day was held on 20th February, 2016. It aimed at enhancing communication between parents and teachers through the direct contact and face-to-face meeting – Not only can the parents understand more about their children’s learning at school, but also the teachers can get to know more about their students’ life at home. Many schools have long been focusing on students’ academic results, and neglecting students’ needs on whole-person development on Parents’ Day. The excessive focus on students’ academic weaknesses has made the Parents’ Day like an open trial. Undoubtedly, both parents and teachers have all the good intentions for utilising this opportunity to help children or students explore the areas for improvement and boost their academic results. However, as informed by my many years of experience, such moves will lead to adverse effects and create numerous contradictions between parents and children. This not only cannot improve students’ learning performance, but also engender many unnecessary conflicts; impairing the parent-child relationship.
Positive Messages
Accordingly, we hope to convey two messages on Parents’ Day in this school year. The first message is “positive” while the second is “comprehensive”. “Positive” is referred to the admiration of parents and teachers for the children’s or students’ good qualities and strengths. Through the understanding of students’ bright side, more praise, appreciation and encouragement can be given to make students happier. Parents will also be delighted and contented after recognising the bright sides of their children. I am personally convinced that praise is more powerful than blame. Children can perform better after being praised. Moreover, parent-child relationships will not be as tight as before and gradually become harmonious. After expressing the appreciation, the teachers will analyse the students’ needs and look for improvement methods together with the parents. With the establishment of an action plan, the student learning performance can ultimately be improved. This is what “positive” communication is meant to be.
Comprehensive Learning Portfolio
As for the meaning of “comprehensive”, it refers to the holistic care and the whole-person development. Different from the society a few decades ago, the attention was narrowly focused on academic results and scores alone. Multiple intelligences were proposed by scholars many years ago. They argued that human abilities are broad. Different people possess different levels of intelligence. Academic achievement is only one of the categories. Other intelligences are equally important and should not be neglected.
To highlight the importance of whole-person development, the school has prepared a learning portfolio folder for each student in this school year, which is used for keeping all the personal achievements attained. For example, students with outstanding performance in sports can put their certificates in the folder. Students excel in arts can also put their works there. Academic records will of course be kept. We hope that every student of Kwei Wan Shan College will have a comprehensive record of his or her achievement. Upon graduation, they can take away with them the learning portfolio folder as a reference for admission officers at university or employers at work, helping them explore different paths for education and career in future. Besides, the portfolio is a tool for students to understand their strengths and good qualities. Through the collection of their all-round attainments, the portfolio will be a great help for life and career planning as they can know more about their abilities, interests, and aspirations.
Gratitude to parents for their support to school
Moreover, in order to facilitate the various affairs on continuous enhancement and school development, parents were invited to fill in a questionnaire on Parents’ Day to let the school understand the students’ overall learning performance from the parents’ perspectives on the one hand and assess if the school support for parents is adequate. The response rate of the questionnaire is approximately 70%. The overall scores are higher than last year. Among the 23 questions, 18 have scores higher than the average while the remaining 5 have the same scores. It reveals that parents are satisfied with the overall support in this academic year. The most satisfactory area is “Teachers care about my children”, the average score is 4.41 (See Figure 1). The questionnaire also reveals that “Parents are pleasant to let their children study in this school”, the average score is 4.36 (See Figure 2). One of the concerned items in the questionnaire is “Parents actively participate in the activities organised by the school and/or the Parent-Teacher Association”. The score is 3.6 (See Figure 3), which is relatively lower than the other items. The school will pay close attention to the development and enhancement in this area. We hereby call on the parents to participate more in the activities organised by the school and/or the Parent-Teacher Association, and to be involved in the children’s learning life.
Figure 1 “Teachers care about my children”
Figure 2 “Parents are pleasant to let their children study in this school”
Figure 3 “Parents actively participate in the activities organised by the school and/or the Parent-Teacher Association”
In addition, four school-based questions related to the school major concerns are newly added in the parent questionnaire in this academic year, which are lesson preview, e-learning, reading habit, and life and career planning respectively. As shown in the questionnaire results, parents are generally satisfied with the fact that (a) “the school is able to help children understand his/her further study and career path through life and career planning”. The average score is 4.1 (See Figure 4). Parents also agree that (b) “the school is able to help children nurture a reading habit” (The average score is 3.9) and to (c) “carry out learning through electronic devices” (The average score is 3.8). However, regarding (d) “lesson preview” (The average score is 3.4), more efforts are needed to help students cultivate their self-regulated learning habits.
Figure 4 “School-based questions related to the school major concerns”
Finally, on behalf of the school, I would like to thank all the parents for your support and confidence towards the school, and to promise that we will ceaselessly uphold our tradition – ‘Care for each person, Excel in every lesson’. We will continue to provide quality education to nurture your children’s growth to attain all-round development and to become a remarkable Wahshanian.
Mr. Cheng Lai-lam, Principal