TEACHERS AND PRINCIPALS: TWO INDISPENSABLE SCHOOL PERSONNEL

CAROL V. ALMACEN

It is hard to win a war if you don’t have good officers. In the same manner that it is even harder to build an excellent school if you don’t have good administrators. Has there ever been a great school without a great principal? In the same manner, that there will never be a great leader without followers who get things done in a stipulated manner.

Educators and administrators work together to create an environment that promotes learning. Effective principals are strong educators, mooring their work on the essential issues of learning and teaching and incessant school improvement. School administrators are responsible for the operation of the entire school. They lead the school through the goal-setting process in which student achievement data is analyzed, improvement areas are identified and actions for change are initiated. In the 1991 EDCOM Report, the school principal was seen as the “key variable in our unending quest for quality education in the basic educational system”. They act as institutional leaders that gear the wheel of the school operation towards the right track.

The teachers on the other hand are deemed to be the most important personnel in the school. They are considered as the front lines of education for in their hands lies the success of the teaching learning process. The teachers and principals are two indispensable personnel in school. They are interdependent with each other. Though the principals manage and plan for the school they depend on their teachers in getting the work done in prescribed fashion, while the teachers look up to the principals for guidance and direction. One’s attitude is significant because the posture that the head and the subordinates assumed in daily activities can have a great impact on the improvement of the school.

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The author is Teacher III at San Basilio Elementary School, Santa Rita District