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As another school year begins, I recommend that parents read the book, What Every Parent Should Know About Education, by Chris Atherton and Stuart Kime, which is available in public libraries. It will teach parents how to help their children succeed. There is a section in the book which discusses the importance of creating a supportive classroom environment. On that note, I would like to share my recent observations at a student care centre. As part of Christmas classroom activities, groups of young children had to spell “Merry Christmas” from letters that were jumbled up. Almost all could spell the word “Merry” but not the word “Christmas”. The feedback from the centre supervisor was negative. The children were told that they had not used their knowledge of phonics to help them spell correctly. One group did not attempt to form a word, and the children were chided for “not trying”. I found out later that the letter “A” had mistakenly not been given to them. We should advise children that they can question things when they cannot make sense of something, a missing vowel in this case. We should also teach children to see failure as a learning tool. Children will encounter failures as they grow, but they must not see them as a terrible thing. It is not right to make children feel like failures because they were unsuccessful at a task.