As the term is ending and teachers are busy marking the exams, students are eagerly preparing to go back home to meet their parents. While others prepare for home, some students are not eager and feel like continuing with studies at school. One wonders whether they say this in the name of seriousness or it is a matter of dodging the domestic work that they will find at home. Whichever the case is, students should understand the meaning of having holidays and benefiting from them such that when they come back for studies they are more than fresh to resume studying. Teachers as well need to prepare enough holiday packages for their students. This ensures that there is no room for redundancy. I believe that putting students to task bars them from all sorts of misconduct and instead encourages research and reading ahead of time. Parents also need to know their roles and play them confidently by making students perform their duties properly. On a serious note this is the holidays are a period for parent to sit down and talk to their children. On several occasions parents claim to be very busy and never find time to talk to their children. In the long run the task is left to be done by the teacher alone who will never be effective without the help of the student’s parents. This situation does not help at all because at the end of the day, a teacher will not give all that there is for a child to learn. Since ‘charity begins at home’ it does not matter how busy parents are, nurturing begins from home and teachers only supplement on what the parent has already taught. In situations where there are maids at home, children should be taught to engage in domestic work. What is important is to prioritise tasks and at the end of the day everyone will be happy. For this reason, it is important that parents work hand in hand with the teachers in order to impart life skills in their children such that they are able to cope in all areas of life as they grow into responsible young men and women. The author is a teacher in the Eastern Province shebs10@yahoo.com
