Regard Teaching In Rural Areas As Finding Solutions To Problems

Dir. Bibir, Joseph C. Osei

The Director of Bibir Ghana Joseph Charles Osei, has urged teachers who are posted to rural areas to work, to regard it as a challenge by government, for them to help find solutions to real problems confronting education in those places.

He maintained that, government’s decision to post teachers to rural communities to work should under no circumstance be misconstrued to mean punishment for those category of teachers, but rather, such a decision must be seen as a special opportunity given to teachers to go and prove their worth, by letting the communities and for that matter the whole nation, know that they did not spend three years in the college for nothing but to come out and solve difficult problems with the knowledge and skill acquired.

Mr. Osei made these statements when he opened a three-day in-service training workshop on literacy and numeracy organized by Bibir Ghana in Savelugu, for teachers of ten selected basic schools in the Savelugu-Nanton Municipality of the Northern Region.

He commended teachers who were currently teaching in village schools in the Savelugu-Nanton Municipality and most parts of the region, for their willingness to teach in such schools and encouraged them to try to make a difference in the lives of their pupils in order to distinguish themselves. 

The workshop which was part of the implementation of a project by the NGO dubbed: ““Supporting Basic Education in The Communities of Northern Ghana” was aimed at addressing the challenges teachers faced when they had to teach Mathematics and English, that were considered very essential subjects in basic education in the country.

It was also aimed at enhancing the capacities of teachers on the principles of teaching techniques/general pedagogy; code of professional conduct/ethics; how to prepare lesson plans in numeracy/literacy and use of TLMs among others, so that they could deliver efficiently and effectively in the classroom after going through the training.  

A village type of school

Funded by Intervida, a Spanish donor organization, the project which began this year has already built the capacities of Parent Teacher Associations, School Management Committees and Teachers of the ten schools whose performance had been dwindling over the years, and hoped to donate some teaching and learning materials to the various beneficiary schools. 

A Deputy Director of Education in charge of Human Resource Management at the Savelugu-Nanton Education Directorate Chief Mahama Abubakari, also reminded the over forty participants that the reward of teachers was still in heaven and not on earth, saying “no amount of reward given to teachers on earth can ever satisfy us and so let’s work assiduously towards achieving what is waiting for us in heaven”.

He said there were a lot of advantages in such trainings given to teachers by stakeholders in the educational sector and encouraged participants to always show seriousness during such training programmes since that was one of the ways they could improve upon their skills in teaching.

Participants having group work

Chief Mahama also empasised that as teachers, they should find joy in whatever they were doing in their schools rather than always lamenting over challenges and difficulties, which were the very reasons why they were posted to solve in such places.

Meanwhile, Bibir Ghana is a non-governmental organization operating in less endowed communities in the Northern Region. It provides opportunities to children and their mothers as well as young girls to enable them realize their potentials through education, income generating activities and skills training.