More often than not, teachers complain about the manifestations of their students’ undesirable and acceptable behavior inside and outside the classroom because of their inability to know and understand their present family status or situation.  Inability to assess and evaluate their students’ family background really gives headaches to the teacher in maintaining desirable behavior and attitudes in the classroom.  Some teachers have the guts to correct the behavior of their students with the use of the anecdotal record, sociogram and looking at their previous scholastic records and even personal interview of the neighbors.

 

However, the best way of knowing and understanding one’s students’ behavior, attitudes and status is the teacher’s visit to the students’ home. As a teacher, sometimes we need to leave our classroom and go on for a home visitation. Set a home visitation after the class hour or during your free day to see the actual life-style of your student.

 

Here are some tips in order to get satisfactory information in your home visit:

 

1. Prepare a thorough well-planned set of questions brief enough to be answered by the parents.

2. List down also the primary aspects the teachers like to see contributing to the undesirable

attitudes and behavior of such students under her.  Some of these are his house water system

and lighting facilities, parents’ educational attainment and occupation, environment and

neighborhood and distance of their home from the school.

 

By seeing and knowing all these important aspects through the teacher’s home visitation together with all her students, the teacher will come to realize why some of her students show and manifest such undesirable and unacceptable behavior and attitudes.  The teacher should not scold them anymore for coming to school late because of the distance of their house to the school for not paying the authorized contributions because their parents have no stable jobs; for not getting assistance in their assignment or homework because their parents have not gone to college;  for not observing cleanliness and sanitation because they have no toilets at home; or her students are not healthy, alert and enthusiastic in their studies because they belong to the poor families.

 

All these factors will contribute to the non-attainment of favorable attitudes and behavior in the classroom. That is why, principal should encourage teachers to go on home visitation to their students’ homes and parents. The more the teacher visits the students’ homes, the better, because the parents could also evaluate assess the attitudes and behavior of their children if there is a sign of improvement. Frequent home visitation and interview  of their parents will greatly help the teacher in minimizing undesirable attitude

and behavior of learners, thus avoiding scolding, nagging, and uttering bad language in the classroom on the part of the teachers.  Thus parents and teachers are like twins in the molding of the personality traits, attitudes and behavior of the learners.

By: Ricer Mojar Borja | Teacher I | Mariveles National High School – Cabcaben | Mariveles, Bataan