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 ISSUES IN EDUCATION - COMMENTARY


√ Communication

√ Critical thinking

√ Education

√ Leadership

√ Professionalism





The Teacher's Gift




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Improving School Leadership in Ten Easy Steps

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Robert Frost, late American poet aptly said,  "education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence". Recently, the news media in a society that will remain unnamed reported that a male school principal was in a fight with a female student. Witnesses, however, reported that there were actually no blows thrown by the principal, in spite of his best efforts to box the student into oblivion. It was a super human effort by those who restrained the principal to keep him in check, as for a moment, he let his mask slip - the mask of being a decent, educated man, in charge of his faculties and who weilded much power - and became the man that the environment in which he grew up moulded, a base human being like many of us who does not turn the other cheek in the face of provocation. It would seem that the student does not respect anyone or anything. She has a reputation for being unruly, foul mouthed, aggressive,  uncooperative...
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Teachers: 6 ways to maintain a "good" relationship with your students

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Photo credit: pixabay.com You are in a noble profession, or so you've been told. Your job is very important. You are charged with moulding young and not so very young minds to accept and nurture what is "good" and so be a credit to society. Because, society needs "good" people if it is to surge upward in its development.  You're supposed to achieve this noble goal, in spite of whatever resistance/challenge that you meet in the classroom - students who are aggressive, disrespectful, resistant to learning what you are teaching them in the classroom... Some days the challenge of finding the right balance between allowing your students to be students, thus keeping them always happy, and getting them to perform up to the standard that you know they can perform weighs heavily on you. I have been a teacher for more than 25 years and I have survived many of these days. On one such day, I thought up this "tongue in cheek" list, intended to stir...
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Sharing information: One of the key components of organisational success

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Being in a position of leadership in an organisation is being in a group, an “in-group”, that is, a group which some of those on the outside perceive as being desirable, one that they would give anything to be a part of, one whose status is elevated. While some of those on the outside of this group, that is the “out-group” are longing to take their place in this “in-group”, many of those who have found themselves in this group keep on devising ways to maintain their position and to keep subordinates firmly in their subordinate position. The problem with this behaviour is that the goals of the organisation will not be fully met if there is a gap in the organisation which subordinates perceive is being deliberately constructed by leadership in order to keep the two groups from developing any sort of group identity. This is a problem which is compounded by the animosity towards and distrust of leadership which usually ensue in situations like these. Since all members in the organisation a...
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