Dear Editor,
As a lifelong teacher, who has taught both in Guyana and the US, I applaud the measures announced recently by the Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand; to wit, low-cost health and life insurance coverage, a revolving mortgage fund for teachers to access up to $12 million in financing, discounts at over 150 businesses, and the establishment of a Teacher Benevolence Fund.
As well, the reinstatement of the annual National Teachers’ Award with increased prizes and an inaugural teachers’ conference geared at capacity building and networking are welcome signs. If not yet considered, may I also suggest that ongoing professional development (PD) and psychosocial care be built into this new approach going forward?
At a minimum, all teachers should be trained in differentiated instructions, classroom management without corporal punishment, cultivating emotive connections, emphatic communication, conflict resolution, and mandatory reporting of all forms of abuse and violence relating to students. The offer by The Caribbean Voice, made several years ago, to provide “train the trainer” training with respect to some or all of these issues, is still on the table.
Perhaps also schools should be mandated to have at least one professional development session each month. And a mechanism should be in place to facilitate the development of master teachers, whose pedagogical training, enhanced by periodic training organised by the Ministry of Education, would enable them to lead the PD sessions at their schools. In this respect also, consideration should be given to a one-year mentorship for each entry level teacher, for which a cadre of retired teachers can be co-opted.
As well, teachers’ self-care, self-esteem, coping skills and stress management must be focused on via an ongoing schema. I recall some years ago, when The Caribbean Voice had invested in psychosocial workshops in collaboration with the Guyana Teachers Union, teachers were ecstatic that their psychosocial needs were finally been addressed. Perhaps a similar collaboration can be put in place involving the GTU, the Ministry and the Mental Health Unit of the Ministry of Health, along with local NGOs with the requisite capacity and scope.
In this process, students must not be left out. The much-lamented lack of counsellors in every school requires urgent attention, even if one counsellor serves more than one school initially. Unlike when The Caribbean Voice started lobbying for this in 2014, today there are enough individuals with at least a bachelor in psychology degree. Perhaps the Ministry can work with UG to finally launch the master’s in psychology, which was announced since 2017, and for which Dr Katija Khan of the University of the West Indies, Trinidad & Tobago, was the consultant. With this in place, counsellors with a first degree can then be facilitated to obtain their masters perhaps via weekend and holiday classes.
This process of healthy minds in health bodies will be incomplete without the involvement of parents. Recently, the Ministry’s Childcare and Protection Agency (CPA) launched the “Every Child Safe Campaign”, which was crafted with the intention of engaging communities in efforts to create safe environments for children. One component of this effort could be the harnessing of Parent-Teachers Associations to organise regular parenting sessions that would not only address child abuse, but also the broader issue of parenting overall, as well as relationship dysfunction, including lack of emphatic communication. Providing parents with the requisite knowledge and the skill sets would empower them to aspire towards zero violence homes and communities, and for healthy, functional relationships within homes, both between parents and with their children.
This is also where teachers’ conflict resolution and mandatory reporting of all forms of abuse and violence relating to students assume critical importance. Such training would enable teachers to diffuse conflicts among students at schools as well as become part of the system to identify child abuse and report them to requisite authorities. And perhaps, since the goal is not to punish parents willy-nilly nor arbitrarily remove children from their homes, school counsellors can play a part in dealing with identified abuse, at least on the entry point on a ladder of intervention. Also, in respect to conflict resolution, consideration could be given to peer mediation in schools, as often children respond well to intervention by their peers.
Sincerely,
Annan Boodram
