The Management of the leading 100% free daily surveying APP dubbed Teacher Tapp, has released a survey indicating how serious teachers in Ghana are in the fight against the novel coronavirus.
Teacher Tapp is a 100% free daily surveying app that gives teachers from across Ghana a voice, while also providing them with expertly-designed CPD to improve their teaching.
Note: We officially recommend for every teacher in Ghana to download the 100% free app to enhance their teaching skills.
1. The primary focus
According to their findings, final year students returning to school will have educational, mental, and physical needs that teachers will need to deal with.
“All of these needs are important, but it is impossible for schools to prioritize dealing with all three of them. For example, choosing to focus on catching students up on lost learning may involve having to keep all students in one room so that they can be taught by an expert teacher, even though this makes it easier for infection to spread. Equally, wanting to control the spread of the infection may require all students to wear masks even though it may be distressing and damaging for their mental health”.
With this problem in mind, the management of the Teacher Tapp asked teachers which of the three needs they would like schools to focus on.
Interestingly, the survey indicated that dealing with issues of student mental health and wellbeing was a priority for only 1 in 5 teachers. This may be due to pending exams for the majority of returning students. It may also help with protecting students against bad mental health in the long term.
If students do not catch up on learning to perform adequately in these exams, then a poor set of exam results could cause more negative mental health.
Equally, it may be due to schools lacking the resources or training to deal effectively with mental health as a priority. Let the management know what explains this difference at baz@teachertapp.co.uk
2 . The purpose of parent engagement
Throughout school closures, we’ve asked questions to teachers about their level of parent engagement. While this level of engagement has generally been high, we were surprised to find out that it has been lower than at times of the year when schools are open.
Some might argue that it’s more important to keep in contact with students’ parents when schools are closed than when they are open. Students and parents need to be motivated to continue learning as well as being given updates on the developing situation with schools reopening.
However, this isn’t generally how teachers understand the purpose of parental engagement. When we asked, a huge 80% told us they mainly keep in contact with parents to update them on their child’s progress. Meanwhile, only just over 50% saw parental engagement as a tool to increase student engagement and achievement within school.
Naturally, there is no student progress to update parents on during school closures. But there will be as schools reopen, and much of this progress will occur within a very short period of time. What is your plan for updating and keeping in contact with parents during this 6-week period? Let us know at baz@teachertapp.co.uk
3 . Face mask failure
Face masks present a real challenge for schools right now. Last week teachers told us they’re concerned about students losing them, forgetting to wear them and even forgetting to wash them.
What about teachers? Keeping busy with lots of different activities, it might be easy for a teacher to also make the same mistakes we worry that student might make. Equally, teachers may make principled decisions to not wear a mask in order to communicate more clearly with students or avoid discomfort.
If such action was to take place, two-thirds of our respondents believe that the teacher should be professionally disciplined.
This finding goes together with point 1 above to show how serious teachers are about managing the spread of infection within schools and within Ghana more broadly. This is a good attitude to have – it is the best way of making sure the virus is under control as soon as possible!
4. Every week, we share expert CPD. Here are the articles we shared this week
- The case for a single teaching union in Ghana
- Why you shouldn’t teach using games
- Three ways to improve any education system
- Teachers are quite safe from infection
- How to make teachers punctual
- Metacognition – the quick way to improve teaching
Source: Teacher Tapp
