The Mrs. is an educator. She works on a contract part time basis teaching Primary school kids daily so that she only works a few hours a day and is back home by 2:30pm most of the time to spend time with the boy.
This term she is teaching Primary 1 Math at a local primary school. She teaches a class made up of academically weak students who are specially taken out from their regular classes so that they can have a 1 to 15 ratio specialized attention. At Primary 1, many of these kids don't even know what is 4 minus 2
I think the principal of that school is very wise to pull out the weaker students so that a teacher can focus exclusively on them.
She noticed that almost all of these kids have one or more of the following disadvantages.
a. Either comes from a large family of 4-5 children. Unfortunately, 80% of her students come from a certain ethnic group (I hope I do not come across as racist in this comment, just stating a fact)
b. Family belongs to the lower economic strata
c. Have families that are not very supportive of their education
A pupil of hers has a mother who keeps telling the Mrs. "HE CANNOT MAKE IT" when she called the mother to discuss how they can better work together as a parent-teacher team to improve his grades. When the kid missed school and had homework, the mother did not even come to school to pick it up despite the Mrs. repeated reminders.
This led me to the conclusion that for a kid to do reasonably well in school, the family support and resources must be available. If not, many of the kids will suffer from low self-esteem and hence will lag behind in school. The parents play a big part in establishing a general good sense of self-esteem in order for the children to grow and enjoy in school.
Educating kids is such a tough job for both the parents and the teachers...