‘NTIC improves teacher competence for better classroom’
As the school year approaches, a total of 500 teachers from schools under the Nigerian Tulip International Colleges (NTIC), are said to have attended a capacity development workshop between August 27 and 31, on how to give their best in the classroom.
This year’s edition, which was organized by NTIC management on ‘Professional and Personal Development’, had two resource persons from the United Kingdom including Julietta Shoemann who has been in the profession for over 30 years and some Nigerian scholars who groomed the teachers on the various methodologies in modern day teaching and learning.
The workshop also provided the opportunity for the newly recruited teachers to be inducted into the NTIC tradition of excellence by undergoing thorough exposure to modern teaching tools.
Teachers of the subjects were said various to have acquired new skills and shared their experiences with their colleagues from other schools with the aim of becoming better and resourceful for the new academic session.
Mr. Orhan Kertim, Managing Director of NTIC, said the annual workshop was in preparation for the new academic session aimed at building on the successes of the previous academic session.
He said it was mandatory for teachers to attend the workshops especially before the beginning of a new session mainly to improve their competencies to make classrooms conducive.
The workshop, he said, gave an opportunity to NTIC management to interact and engage with teachers from the schools located in Lagos, Ogun, Kaduna, Kano and Yobe states as well as Abuja.
“The reason behind this conference is because the success of students’ learning depends on the quality and performance of the teachers. So, if the teachers know what they are doing regarding planning and adequate exposure, the students will be shaped accordingly academically. We at NTIC lay emphasis on training and teaching our teachers to be optimal,” he said.
The MD noted also that the workshop would enable teachers to have a united teaching regime in all curriculums so that the same scheme of work is applied in all the schools for the attainment of the common goal which is academic excellence.
Apart from the workshop, NTIC conducts teachers’ examinations thrice a year to assess the quality of teachers, he said, adding that “at the end of the day, we rank our teachers and give incentives to the top five from each department.”
The Deputy Managing Director, Mr. Feyzullah Bilgin, said the five-day intensive training for returning and new teachers exposed participants to the rudiments of interactive teaching and learning using different learning styles.
In her remarks, Julietta Shoemann said teachers must use a variety of teaching aids even by fabricating some to make lessons understandable.
She said: “I started out as an English teacher in China in a low resourced environment, and that meant that the classrooms had nothing but a chalkboard and this meant that I had to be very creative and try to make the lessons engaging for the students.”
She said schools under NTIC have enough instructional materials and teachers are exposed to well-equipped classrooms.
“My main aim is how to promote student engagement in the classrooms,” she also said.
The principal, NTIC Boys, Abuja, Mr Muazu Omeji, said it was essential for every teacher to have the ability to handle and motivate students in the class to be able to bring out the best in them so that success can be recorded.
He said, “At the workshops, we usually discuss the curriculum and the books to be used for the new academic session, and we also review the previous academic session by looking at the challenges our teachers encountered.”