But it ended up being also a moment of heart-to-heart talks with participating teachers drawn from various schools in Lagos, on what it takes to be an effective teacher that can hold their heads and shoulders high anywhere they go. This is not surprising as the convener, the guest speaker and, indeed, every other resource person that addressed the participants, from the high table or from the podium, are all highly-trained teachers, some of whom have put between 30 and 40 years of service into the teaching profession.
“If you are proud to be a teacher, could you raise your hand,” Prof. Ngozi Osarenren, former Commissioner of Education in Edo State and today, Head, Department of Educational Foundations, Faculty of Education, University of Lagos (UNILAG), who was the guest speaker, demanded, at the beginning of her talk titled: ‘The Branded Teacher – the Pride of 21st Century’. Many of the participating teachers did. “If you are proud as I am to be a teacher, can you wave at me? (All the teachers did).
“You know, most of us don’t know what we have,” she explained. “A teacher affects eternity. If you have been teaching in the last five years, I am sure you wont be able to count the number of children that you have taught. And, some of them, you do not even know where they are. And, if you have been able to make an impact on them, they will always remember you. When I came into this hall, two people ran to hug me and told me I was their teacher, and for me, that is the greatest reward I can get – that your former student would see you and would want to greet you (the audience clapped excitedly). As a teacher you can never tell where your influence can reach. And, I never knew that I would meet these two people in this hall today. And, I am sure that I did not teach them recently.”
Prof. Osarenren further lamented, in the preamble to her lecture, that it is because Nigerian teachers have gone to sleep “that’s why everybody claims to be an expert in education. Like I always tell people, it is only in education that everybody is an expert and when politicians want to compensate their followers it is the education portfolio that they give them. And, if you sit down and check very well the whole country as I speak now, you will not find up to five education experts as commissioners of education. What you have mainly are lawyers and all kinds of characters manning our ministries of education and if you challenge some of them, they would tell you that the commissioner’s position is a political one, that the commissioner will have to work with the civil servants in the ministry. But I wonder why the same logic cannot be extended to the ministry of health and ministry of justice. That’s why you cannot sit down and fold your arms and allow scavengers to take what belongs to you.”
She was to leave more food for thought as she launched into her paper proper. “I had some discussion with some students,” she said while commenting on the characteristics of best and worst teachers, one of the sub-topics of her lecture. “For those of us that know UNILAG very well, there are so many schools around and most times, I would put on jeans and a shirt and be walking around and be chatting with students. From my discussion, it turned out that the students consider as their best teachers ones that make the class interesting; that have a good grasp or knowledge of their subjects and explain concepts clearly; that do not, at any time, show favouritism but are fair to all the students and that spend time to help the students. Above all, they are considerate of students’ feelings.
“And, what do we have as the worse teachers? The worse teachers are dull and have a boring class; they don’t explain things clearly. They have a poor attitude to work; they show favouritism; they don’t give help and individual attention to students and they don’t relate well to students; they also lack self-control.”
At this juncture, she drove home her message: “I don’t want you to admit to me but from what we have looked at so far, you should ask yourself: where do I belong? Am I one of the best teachers or am I one of the worst? And, if perhaps, you have some of the characteristics of worst teachers, since they are celebrating us, today should be your turning point, to stop being one of the worst teachers and become one of the best teachers.
“When I talk about the teacher effectiveness, I normally say something that I heard from one of my Profs. who talks about educationeering, a term many of you may not be familiar with. He said that a trained teacher is not necessarily a qualified teacher, a qualified teacher is not necessarily a competent teacher, a competent teacher is not necessarily an efficient teacher, and an efficient teacher is not necessarily an effective teacher. And, when we say this, people often wonder what we are talking about. When you say a teacher is trained that means that teacher had undergone the prescribed teacher education programmes. These are all the courses that those that have studied education are supposed to do. If that person had done that, he or she is a trained teacher. But when you now have somebody that had undergone all that teacher education programme and successfully completed it and is certified, you say that he or she is a qualified teacher. But a competent teacher, in addition to undergoing all prescribed teacher education programmes, needs to be an efficient teacher. An efficient teacher is the person that will apply all those principles of teaching and learning. But the teacher that is of interest to us, the branded teacher, the teacher of 21st century, is the effective teacher. This is the teacher that applies those principles that an efficient teacher has been applying, but in a more creative way and in so doing ensure that students learning is maximized. Do you see the difference?”
Earlier, Prof. Osarenren who was bestowed with an award as a mark of honour for her meritorious service in the field of teaching had commended Mrs. Atilola for keeping faith.
“Foluso was one of the students that challenged me,” she said. “I didn’t only teach her, I also supervised her and for me, when a replica of me is making progress, I am also making progress. So, can we give a round of applause for Foluso.” Chief Kaoli Olusanya, former Commissioner of Agriculture, Lagos State, and today, Chief Learning Officer, Kith & Kin Educational Schools, and Father of the Day, also spoke glowingly of Mrs. Atilola’s can-do spirit when he commented on the theme of the programme: “Teacher, the lifeline of a healthy nation.”
“I knew Foluso about 12 years ago,” he revealed. “She was the Head Teacher in our primary school section. She did wonderfully well. She put the children together and I think they produced a little literary book. She is a radical thinker and she can be very critical. On her second tour of our school, when she came in as a Principal, it was a very short stay because of her radical thinking. The teachers she met on ground on her second tour could not really stand up to her revolutionary thinking. They felt that, ‘oh, we should not allow this woman to come in here and scatter our routine.’ They put much pressure on us until she left. But I continue to appreciate her. Between her and me, I continue to contact her and she often comes around and we talk because I found that we share some things in common. She is passionate and she has this burning desire to bring about a change and that is the job of teachers. You have to cause change; you have to be a change agent. We are here to launch her book. That is the product of her thinking. If there is anyone that deserves an award here, I think Foluso deserves one. So, let’s give her a round of applause.” The audience did.
“Our teachers, I am very proud of you but the teacher’s career does not stop in the classroom,” Olusanya added. “The tools of teaching and learning have changed today. But it will amaze you to find that some teachers are afraid to touch the computer. The interactive boards are there but they are gathering dusts, never used because we are products of the old school whereas the children we teach are very familiar with ICT. So, beyond the availability of appropriate and conducive learning environment, I call on Nigerian teachers to retrain themselves to fit into the 21st century.”
“The message is: much is still required of us as teachers,” Mrs. Atilola observed in her welcome speech. “We are the lifelines of our nation. Our nation needs change. Let it start from us by doing more. Let every child that passed through us be truly molded as pride of our nation. Let us sanitize the teaching profession so that every sector in the nation will be sanitized. I celebrate you teachers. Let us be more committed. What is being demanded is not just efficient and effective teacher, we are in an era that demands that we must be multi-skilled since parents and the entire society are dumping their responsibilities on our desks. Our functions today demand that we exhibit the following: a positive attitude to work; professionalism and commitment; strong ability to plan and organise; love for children; excellence in teaching and good communication skills;
“The assignment that we are saddled with in this dispensation demands that we are painstaking; that we are conscientious, that we are hard working and that we aim at reproducing ourselves in the pupils and students we teach. If there is anything that bothers me so much in this dispensation it is that if we are not careful, we may not have teachers again in our classrooms in the next 15, 20 years because we are not reproducing ourselves. Those young adults are not motivated and most of them wouldn’t want to say proudly and naturally, ‘I want to be a teacher’ because they don’t see what is interesting and attractive about us: the way we carry ourselves; what we say, what we do and the way we teach. We need to go back then and repackage ourselves, repackage our job, to make it enviable and attractive to younger generation. As we do so, I know our nation will be better for it.”
“I hope the current administration will go beyond paying lip-service to education in Nigeria and do the due diligence necessary to give us a world-class education system,” Mrs. Awosika who stood in as the Mother of the Day for her mum, Mrs. Aralola Faturoti, Proprietress, Hallmark Secondary School, Ondo, said. “But today is not a day to fix Nigeria’s education problems but to celebrate teachers. As a matter of fact, if we honour you more maybe some of our problems will begin to go away. And, so what I will like to do is to celebrate our teachers.
“We celebrate you because you touch the lives of our children. We thank you. For the endless lesson notes and classroom schedules, we thank you. For teaching us to master our subjects very well, for the field trips and for everything that you have put together for us, we thank you. We thank you because you make yourselves vulnerable; you allow us to know you and to learn about you, your passion, what you spend your free time doing. Because you are always available for us, we thank you. Because you have our interests at heart, we learn new skills, we discover new interests, we make new friends, we have fun and we support each other, we thank you. You teach us to live in a community, to be respectful and responsible, to be organized and to follow directions, to be at school on time, to be prepared for our public exams, we thank you. You give your best in your teaching of all our school subjects – reading, writing, mathematics, science, sports, music and arts, we thank you. You expose us to theatre, you expose us to art, you expose us to music, we thank you. You instill discipline in us and discourage tardiness, we thank you. You teach us obedience, we thank you. You enrich our education through various resources, the science lab, the computer lab and the library, we thank you.”
Apart from Prof. Osarenren, other dignitaries who were honoured with awards during the occasion, include Chief Olusanya, Dr. Mrs. Funmi Oboye, Managing Director, Timray Educational Consult, Lagos, who was honoured for making great impact as a great teacher and mentor in the life of Mrs. Atilola who also used the opportunity to launch her book, The Teacher and Dynamics of Classroom Management and Practice, Mummy Faturoti, Pastor Antoniette Omo Osagie, of Christ the Redeemer’s College, Mrs. Omokorede Fasoro, of Maximum Impact and Mrs. Yinka Ogunde of Edumark Consult. There were also awards for outstanding teachers and students.
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