Why do you do it?

Mom is busy. After spending a day like a war at work, another war awaits her when she returns home. She has to check the child’s report card and help with homework. It’s hard enough to send them to academy for subjects like Korean, English, and Math, but these days, everyone is talking about the importance of literacy, reading comprehension, and reading in college entrance exams, which makes her head hurt even more. Every time she worries about her child’s reading, she buys  sets of books from home shopping, which fill up the bookshelf, but the child is not interested at all and she doesn’t have the energy to read it to them. She asks Google for everything and asks the 'pig mom' who is famous in the neighborhood and finds a book teacher who is said to teach well. So now she’s going to meet a book teacher, but can she meet without any preparation?

They’re handing over their kid’s education to someone else because they can’t do it themselves, so what else do they need to prepare? Preparation is necessary and there are things to know. Reading and writing are areas where good results cannot be seen just by leaving it to the teacher. There must be active interest and cooperation from parents to see progress even if it is slow. The starting point determines where you will arrive.

Reading/writing is difficult. It’s a burden for children who feel that time is absolutely insufficient because they have to read books to be able to take classes. It’s the same for children who like books. So the purpose must be clear from the start. The first question I throw at moms during counseling is ‘Why do you do it?’ Most of them say they wish they could write well. That’s obvious. And they also say they wish they could read a variety of books. That’s also obvious. But if you ask for this, the class can only be vague. It’s like going to get your hair done and asking them to do whatever they want.

So what should you ask the teacher? Before starting the class, I introduce textbooks and books and have a consultation with parents who come to ‘see me’ as a teacher. Of course, you have to interview the teacher during that time, but the most important thing is to convey your specific requirements. Both mom and teacher need to know what you want to gain through this class in order to see good results. There’s a friend I met in 4th grade of elementary school and took classes until 6th grade. The mother of that friend had already looked at all the reading/writing brands on the market and understood their strengths and weaknesses. The teacher can’t help but be nervous. The requirements were very detailed.

“My daughter has a rich imagination and likes writing stories and reads a lot of fairy tales. But she really hates reading information books. And she seems to have trouble with logical writing. I hope you can guide her well in that area.” In fact, there aren’t many mothers who make such requests. However, this prepared attitude of the mother definitely affects the quality of the class later on. When I had classes with this friend, I paid a lot of attention to non-literary classes, of course. We read works and wrote explanatory texts and argumentative texts, etc., we did a lot of logical writing, but in order to observe the improvement of the child’s writing, we wrote on a separate notebook prepared for it, corrected it, rewrote it several times repeatedly. The result was very satisfactory.

In this way, it is very important for parents to understand their children’s condition well. If you are asked by a teacher why you are starting a class, don’t speak vaguely but speak accurately and specifically and ask for it. Your money and your children’s time are precious.