HOW STAFF MEETING EVERY MORNING IS STEALING OUR PRECIOUS TEACHING TIME

When I resumed at my placement school I realized that there were so many things that were standing in the way of proper time management in the public school system.

I noticed that as soon as the assembly was over around 8am, all the teachers now start gathering outside the Assistant head teacher's office. It's a routine and we all know it. It usually begins with a worship song and then prayer starts before the announcement and chitchat about something completely off begins before they now finally go to their classrooms. Sometimes all these ends after 9am.

First of all, why are we gathering to sing and pray again when we just did that with the children? Is this one we are having a superior prayer? Why are we gathering every day to repeat things we already know. More so we are all on the Whats App group where only staff of the school get to pass information and talk as much as they want.

As we are out there talking about things we could easily pass across through the Whats App group the reason we all have a job-the children! Are left to their devices, unsupervised in the classrooms, with no single teacher in class in the entire school.

Agnes Onyekwere and her KCC students

Classes are to begin at 8am period! No meeting should stand in the way of that. The children are there to learn and our job is to facilitate that learning by any means possible but instead, what do we do? We find pretty excuses to stay away from that one thing that we are here to do.

Since I started off teaching in a public school I have never seen a scenario where there's any sort of time management supervision. When classes begin around one hour after they should there's definitely something suffering neglect as a result of that.

If only the teachers' meeting can be cut down to like once or twice a week for special announcements then I am very confident that they'll be plenty of time for teachers to settle into their duties for the day.

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