[ 2012-06-24 ]

Putting Teachers first: Nana Akuffo Addo's agenda - NPP UK Chairman
The back-to-school season is here with us again
and I want to celebrate a group of men and women
who are often maligned and marginalised: teachers.
Like so many others, it was a teacher who changed
the direction of my life, and to whom I'm forever
indebted.

Research has shown that many Ghanaians believed
that high-achieving students should later be
recruited to become teachers, but most parents do
not as a first choice want their children to take
up teaching in the public schools as a career.

So how do we expect to entice the best and
brightest to become teachers when we keep tearing
the profession down? We take the people who so
desperately want to make a difference that they
enter a field where they know that they'll be
overworked and underpaid, and we scapegoat them as
the cause of a society-wide failure.

SPEAKING ON SOURCES RADIO UK 96.3FM ,Mr Krufi Said
,Many teachers no doubt feel excluded and
misunderstood and undermined and feel the
government does not listen to them enough yet
teaching is the profession that teaches all the
other professions. If a politician had 40 people
in his or her office at one time, all of whom had
different needs, and some of whom didn't want to
be there and were causing trouble, and the
politician without assistance, had to treat them
all with professional excellence for nine months
in a year, then he might have some conception of
the classroom teacher's job.

The simple reason for this age-old disenchantment
comes from the fact that teachers do not speak
with the same voice or indeed have no strong
advocates to speak on their behalf. Let us think
of our teachers as the engine of education that
will drive the socio-economic development of our
nation. In each of us there is a private hope and
dream which, when fulfilled, can be translated
into benefit for everyone and greater strength for
our nation.

We as parents, and as a society at large, must
therefore acknowledge our shortcomings and the
enormous hurdles that teachers must often clear to
reach a child. Teachers may be the biggest
in-school factor, but there are many out-of-school
factors that weigh heavily on performance, like
growing child poverty, hunger, homelessness, home
and neighbourhood instability, adult
role-modelling and parental pressure and
expectations.

The first teacher to clear those hurdles in my
life was Miss Hammond. From the first through
third year in primary school, I went to school in
a neighbouring town because it was the school
where my sisters had attended. I was not a great
pupil. I had very little confidence. I was left
handed and I was minded to write with my left hand
but I was scared that my teachers who were very
strict would not want me to write with a left
hand. I refused therefore to write and began to
grow invisible. My teachers didn't seem to see me
nor I them. (To this day, I can't remember any of
their names.)

My work began to suffer so much that I was
temporarily placed in the “slow” row. No one even
talked to me about it. They just sent a note. I
didn't believe that I was slow, but I began to
live down to their expectations.

When I entered the primary class four, my mother
moved me into another school in my hometown. I was
placed in Miss Hammond's class. A new teacher,
from Accra who spoke very little of my native
language and there I was, a little nothing of a
boy, lost and slumped, flickering in and out of
being having to speak in English to this new
teacher.

She was a pint-sized firecracker of a woman, with
short hair, round glasses which fitted her face so
well, and a thin slit of a mouth that she kept
well-lined with red lipstick. On the first day of
class, she gave us a time table quiz. Maybe it was
the nervousness of being the “new child,” but I
quickly jotted down the answers and turned in the
test — first.

“Whoa! That was quick. Blow, we're going to call
you Speedy Gonzales.” She said it with a broad
approving smile, and the kind of eyes that warmed
you on the inside. She put her arm around me and
pulled me close while she marked my paper with the
other hand- the left hand. I got a couple wrong,
but most of them right. And I saw the first time a
teacher writing with the left hand. I couldn't
remember a teacher writing with the left hand, nor
ever smiling with approval, neither did I remember
any putting their hand around me, nor praising my
performance in any way. It was the first time that
I felt a teacher cared about me, saw me or
believed in me. It lit a fire in me. I never got a
wrong mark again. I figured that Miss Hammond
would always be able to see me if I always shined.
I always wanted to make her as proud of me as she
seemed to be that day. And, she always was. In
secondary school, I was identified as gifted and
talented, enjoyed government scholarship and I
went on to graduate with an upper of my class and
became a lawyer. And all of that was because of
Miss Hammond, the firecracker of a teacher who
first saw me and smiled with the smile that warmed
me on the inside.

We all carry little dreams of making a difference
for our country in its socio-economic
transformation and this is achievable only through
education and only deliverable through our
teachers. To achieve the kind of socio-economic
transformation that we are envisaging in the next
decade, we need a well-trained and motivated
teaching profession that will deliver the newly
redefined basic education. For many years the
teacher manpower has been experiencing a
consistent deficit of teachers ranging from 10,000
in the year 2000 to the current levels of 45,000.
We as a country therefore need to improve on the
number of teachers in a good ratio to pupils as
well as reward excellent teachers. To this end the
initial teacher training in our colleges and
universities must be of good standard and this
must be complemented with continuous professional
development.

So to all of the Miss Hammonds out there (sadly
she is dead now and may her soul rest in perfect
piece), and all the teachers struggling to reach
lost children like I was once, I just want to say
thank you. You deserve our admiration, not our
contempt. That is why Nana Akufo has christened
his educational policy “Teachers' First”

The Teachers First agenda has the following
highlights:

1. An improved initial teacher training of
teachers with the view to giving them transferable
skills through Leadership Development Programmes

2. A special bursary for excellent teachers with
initial or Continuous Professional Education in
Mathematics, Science, Technology and Vocational
education

3. An establishment of more specialist teacher
training colleges in our university campuses to
run correspondence courses aimed at raising the
certificates of our teachers to degree levels.

4. A special bursary for teachers who enrol in
distance learning programmes.

5. An accelerated promotion for teachers and
financial reward for teachers who stay on in the
rural areas as defined by the GES.

Nana Sarkodee.Ababio
( DJ SOURCES ) AMANSANSOMFO
www.sourcesradiouk.com
TEL..00447939723565 .00447950318943 ,
00447903171768 ,00447957068056

Source: Sources Radio UK 96.3FM
sourcesradio@yahoo.co.uk

Source - Radio UK 96.3FM

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