Foundation Empowers Teachers on Core Values of Education

Funmi Ogundare

Teachers drawn from public schools in Lagos, weekend, converged on the Oriental Hotel, Lekki, for the sixth edition of the Teachers Conference 2017, an initiative of the Charios Foundation.

The conference which seeks to help the teachers improve on themselves and promote the core values of education, among others, saw speaker after speaker emphasising on ‘The Teacher and the comprehension gap perspective, ‘Curriculum Developers: A compliment to nation building’, The teacher’s health with respect to work-life balance’.

The General Manager, This Present House, Mrs. Tochi Opara who spoke on ‘Building Structure and bridging the gap between the school and the home’ said there must be a cooperation between the school system and the home devoid of competition and power play, adding that parents must not berate the teachers in the presence of their children.

She opined that there must be communication between the government who are policy makers and the teachers that would send the right message to the society and ensure the needed impact.

According to her, “the teach- ers are moulding lives while the government set the policy, when the teachers mould lives of the students, they don’t remain in the classroom forever, they are spilled back into the society and when the government make a policy that there must be no corporal punishment in schools, there must be a channel to sending the right messages back to the government. Teachers must articulate their views and present it in a way that will make impact.”

The Executive Director, Centre for Peacebuilding and Socio-Economic Resources Development( CePSERD), Mr. Ayokunle Fagbemi said teachers must relate to students based on their level and they must understand child psychology.

He listed the skills teachers could imbibe to relate with students in the classroom to include; being attentive, clarifying issues by asking open ended questions, asking probing questions, validating what they heard, reflecting the feeling as well as summarising.

The Project Manager QPMC Abuja, Mr. Ferguson Uzomah stressed the need for teachers to be encouraged to develop life skills noting, “there is need to move from learning to professional development. The time for change has come. There should competition even among the teachers which will be of benefit to them in future.

The Executive Secretary of the Charios Foundation, Mrs. Boumo Sagay told Journalists earlier that the conference is part of the three programmes it structured in an academic session, adding that the foundation is designed primarily to promote the country’s cultural heritage.

“The only way you can do that, is to look at your core values and education is tied to it. We did some research and found that the people who are teaching today are not particularly proud of the profession and most of them are teaching not because they are passionate about it, but because they just want to make a living.

The teachers need to look at their paradigm, it will help them reconsider a lot of issue and give them global benchmarks so that they will continously improve themselves.

“We want a situation where we can get what is obtainable abroad. We want to make it available for every teacher. For the foundation if all that is discussed here is followed up effectively in the school, then we have promoted the Nigerian cultural heritage,” she stressed