MATTERS ARISING; MACRO TEACHING AND OFF CAMPUS STS

Off to a quick start, the first week of Macro Teaching for level 400s and off campus STS for level 200s have come to a close. While some JHS students begin theirs today, a lot of questions and confusions are springing up from posted students which need redress. Such begruntled students are already raising valid concerns about the situation of the schools posted to and how the headmasters and mistresses are completely misunderstanding the full import of the programme.

 Firstly, as educated during the STS orientation programme not long ago, trainees were informed that, the FIRST TWO WEEKS of the 'Out Programme' will be entirely for OBSERVATION of  mentors to assist them be abreast with practices and procedures they may not be conversant with and fill in the hollow gaps of all the rudimentary practices of the teaching profession. This not withstanding, the school's culture and the type of students mentees are to deal with will be brought to the limelight to ensure that the best methods are adopted to assist such students. Probably too, mentees will, through this two-week observation, be able to identify a problem area to be used for their mandatory project work. The prevailing matters arising indicate that, this directive has been completely been discarded or perhaps, been misread by the heads of these schools as some trainees are made to teach during the first week of reporting.

Another important issue gathered by The Base indicate that, some students, who specialized in a particular subject area say Math or English, have been given additional two, three and at some places four or five other subjects to teach in addition to their prescribed subjects. This situation is quite disheartening due to the undisputed fact that students have not mastered the content of such additional subjects and may end up misleading students. Again if students are required to prepare lesson notes for such additional subjects, it burdens students with academic work, hence lesson preparations will not be a effective as expected. These and other challenges are creating a thread of confusions for student-teachers who have embarked on the out programmes. Level 200 STS off campus students are also expected to purely

engage in observations but are being forced to teach. These and many other problems which need redress are making trainees lives difficult in their pursuance of the Supported Teaching in Schools programme. If you have any other concerns you want to share in addition to these, please use the COMMENT button below.