Reading to Children is a Joyful Role for Parents

In this story, Bernard Kosembe, a father from Mitande Village, Masasi DC, Mtwara, describes how he and his daughter, Grace Bernard, changed their behaviors around reading and learning at home due to the USAID Tusome Pamoja (“Let's Read Together”) activity. Bernard Kosembe shares what he has learned through school-parent meetings, Parent-Teacher Partnership (PTP) groups and Community Education Mobilizers (CEMs). By coordinating the establishment of PTP and CEMs, Tusome Pamoja facilitates awareness meetings and orients parents on how to support their children with reading and learning at home.

“Before Tusome Pamoja, I was not active in supporting my daughter’s learning. I was very much concentrated on my work, and believed the education of the child is the responsibility of teachers. My role was to buy a uniform and provide food and health care.

“I remember when my daughter was in second grade, and we were called for a meeting at the school. We were sensitized on how we can support our children academically. We also discussed how parents can support school development. From that meeting, we started our partnership with teachers called PTP. The Head Teacher oriented us on the importance of parents’ support for children to learn when they are at home. We were also told about the book-borrowing program, and the teachers insisted that we visit the school each week to borrow books to read with our children after school hours and during the holidays. We became aware of our roles, and we were very happy to see the availability of books in our school, helping our children to learn to read. One of the CEMs told us that we can even form groups in our town where children can get a chance to read and support each other. That group can also help children from families where parents do not know how to read and write.

“I started to work closely with my daughter’s teacher and visited school once a week to see her progress and borrow books. I bought extra exercise books specifically for home reading, and I used those books to give her homework every evening. Also, I decided to change our regular nightly schedule of watching TV to give her more time to read and do homework.

“Now my daughter is a fifth grade pupil and doing well in the classroom. She performed well in her fourth grade national examinations. Her position was number 4 out of 76 pupils at her school who sat for the national exam. Here at home, we are always supporting her, and we intend to make sure she gets high marks in the seventh grade national examinations.”