Skip to main content

MORE OLDER PEOPLE IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM: IS IT TIME FOR A CHANGE

 Before our beloved seniors in the profession come for me, I would like to start by saying that there's so much to learn from the older teachers and no matter how much we want to go all 21st century on them, there are professional principles that cannot change and who else to pass them or hand them to the next generation of teachers if not them?

Though there are certain observations I have made so far working in a public school with more people who have climbed the forty-five age ladder.

1. It's harder for them to embrace change: An older Headteacher would be the one who would have issues with you rearranging the class seats for aesthetic purposes, to them, that doesn't affect or impact learning, all they want is for you to do you job, write your lesson plan and come to school early, he or she has little to no interest in how creativity or even technology can advance learning. If they don't understand it then it should not be implemented

I have however also seen older teachers and school administrators who are at the forefront of technological and academic breakthroughs in their schools, they take their professional development very seriously and are open to trying out ideas that would help their schools move forward, but unfortunately, these set of people are the exceptions.

Pupils of Emmanuel Anglican Primary School 1 having a digital class
The majority are usually very closed-minded and would always give you the "that's the way it has always been done" sermon. They are usually frightened of confronting the government on any issue at all as they are always scared that the government would just take their jobs away and they'll lose all the benefits that have accrued to them due to their long period of service.

The last time I asked a question about why the government schools have more old staff, I was told that the government had not made any fresh recruitment for many years now, so those in the system get older while the old teachers retire.

This brings us to another question, why has the government halted the recruitment of teachers for this long?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

HOW MY FATHER TAUGHT ME TO BE AN EDUCATOR

  HOW MY FATHER TAUGHT ME TO BE AN EDUCATOR Looking at my life right now, I cannot help but be reminded of my dad. Nnana was what we called him. He was a very quiet man, keeps to himself, didn’t have friends, at least none that we knew of. Right now I remember him telling us stories of how his journey started, at that point my siblings and I were not really interested in those stories seeing how we roll our eyes when he starts giving us one of the stories, we always got one of those anytime we did something wrong-that was one of his punishment strategies. I really don’t know if it’s me who is missing him or there’s just   a lot of things to learn from the life of my dad as it connects to my job as an educator. My father was never really predictable, except of course with his stories. We were not sure what he would do next and was never a fan of always using the cane. My mom was the typical Nigerian mom, everything was a weapon to massively destroy your bad behavior-the c...
10 comments
Read more

Teaching 9-10 Subjects per day: A blessing or a Curse.

The moment I started teaching my first lessons in my placement school, I knew from that moment that I was only going to be racing against time and the structures put in place to facilitate normal academic activities. Personally, I liked to access the situation of things with my learners before I go ahead to figure out what the best approach for a particular topic would be and since I was sure that most of my learners in primary 4 should be sent back to primary 1 I knew that there was a lot of work cut out for me. Before I start my class I try to research a topic online, I go on YouTube and try to find out very simple ways of teaching division to little kids. With this my kids are always surprised how simple Maths can be when I'm the one who is teaching it because the methods I use are at the level they understand and can relate to, this makes my learners feel like this school thing is not as hard as they thought. But the other side to it is the fact that my methods will usually tak...
1 comment
Read more

PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS TEACHING MULTIPLE SUBJECTS. YEH/NEH

If you are a primary school teacher and you teach more than one subject raise your hand.  Do you have subjects you know you have to do more research on before you feel confident teaching them? Do you sometimes feel the need to recheck and double-check things in one or more subjects compared to others? Are there subjects you have outright joy and confidence teaching compared to others? Are there times you wish you just stick to some of these subjects instead of having to pack up everything? To be honest, I understand that most school facilities cannot afford to pay individual teachers to handle each subject, I understand that they expect primary school teachers to know and understand the basic subjects well enough to teach them at preliminary levels, BUT! Are we experimenting with the next generation of Nigerians or are we giving them the best that there is? Our pupils deserve to have the best from every teacher and a teacher can only be his best self if he is teaching what he feels...
Post a Comment
Read more