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Teachers And Parents Manning: Of the hundreds of people stopped by the teachers and parents manning the stall, only three were not prepared to talk and listen once they had satisfied themselves they were not being stopped by a religious or political organization! They were intrigued to find a school stall in the market place, and reacted with positive interest. Many suggested that this was a better place for teachers and parents to meet than on school territory, and that it was right for the local community to know what was happening inside the school.
Children learn first and foremost from their parents. In this respect all parents are teachers - and very effective teachers they are. Arguably, children learn more from their parents in the first five years of life than they do from their schools in the next ten. This book is about parents and teachers working together to help children with their learning; more specifically, it is about parents co-operating with teachers over their own children's reading. We have chosen the term PACT (Parents, Children and Teachers) to embody this concept.
Most schools launch their schemes by choosing the simplest way of getting a large number of parents together, which is to invite them to a special meeting for the purpose (see chapter 4, page 40). We know that big meetings between parents and teachers are often unsatisfactory affairs; teachers may be frustrated because so few parents turn up, or parents disappointed because the meeting does not deal with the issues they really want to know about. But where the theme is children's learning, and especially where parents know that they are being asked to help with it, there is usually a dramatic increase in attendance and in the degree of participation and enthusiasm during the meeting. Teachers often note with pleasure that the proportion of fathers in the audience is also much higher than usual.
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