Daily Lesson from Life 21 July 2008

"Mon, Jul 21, 2008 The Straits Times Allow teachers to teach, or many will keep quitting

MY WIFE has taught in a neighbourhood secondary school in the east for more than five years. She is currently a form teacher in a lower secondary class.

Besides teaching, preparing lessons, marking papers, leading co-curricular activities and so on, she has to do a lot of admin and non-teaching-related work.

This includes selling donation tickets, collecting money and forms, taking minutes during meetings (rotated among teachers) and doing projects on new software. All this takes considerable effort and often eats into time she could spend on value-added work, such as preparing lessons.

Many of her peers also complain of too much non-teaching related responsibilities. In fact, those who have left the teaching profession shared with her that this was the main reason they quit.“

This is a perpetual challenge for a long long time. The last time I was in touch with this topic was when I first came back from Shanghai in July 2005! At the time, someone in the Feedback group shared that they had solved the problems of teachers doing lots of non-teaching tasks by getting MOE to hire 'operation managers' in the school! For some reasons, what you take away, someone somehow will fill it up again with exactly the same damn SHxT!!

Lessons for me:

1. when you want to do the right thing, it is not easy! You have to persist and insist and appeared to be a totally idiot or a person who does not appreciate others' good intention!;

2. you need to fight for your ideal. If teaching is what you want to do and the authorities do not get it, let them know! Go to all the proper channels. Go to the Internet channel. Be a crusader and be ridiculed. This follows from item 1 above. No one will fight the fight for you if you don't take the first step. Like some smart people said: God can only help those who helped themselves!;

3. be cleared on what are your key tasks. Don't be too creative with the fundamental. If you are a teacher, you stick to the basic fundamental. Only when you excel in that do you start to take up something extra that you can ALSO do well!! For the principals, who are now measured and rewarded like a research labs chiefs, please keep the fundamental in mind too. If the measurements are NOT right, let your masters in the MOE know! You can CHOOSE NOT to participate in a reward scheme that is good-intention but ill-conceived!

Finally, may those who are passionate to teach continue to fight the fight and stay in the service to benefit the many students who desperately need good and caring teachers.