The 2021 Teachers Support Programme was a week-long engagement with Educators which started from Monday, May 17 to Friday, May 21, 2021, in five Local Government Areas of Cross River State including Abi, Yakurr, Biase, Akamkpa I and Akamkpa II, respectively.
The programme, as endorsed by the Cross River State Ministry of Education had the primary objective of equipping teachers in public secondary schools with holistic social support skills including personal and career development, critical thinking, problem-solving as well as other relevant pedagogic skills to raise Teacher – Leaders who will facilitate their growth, develop the right mindset, capacity and competence which will eventually translate to their active involvement in supporting students’ academic, character and leadership development in schools.
As part of our achievements, the programme convened a total number of 198 teachers (129 Males and 69 Females) in secondary school. The training sessions were facilitated by a seasoned management consultant and an education expert – Mr Rotimi Eyitayo.
The facilitator took the teachers through the learning journey of “Teacher Leader-Shift”, strategic discussions on the problems hindering quality teaching in recent times and the various dimensions through which the goal of teaching can be best prioritized and achieved. The learning experiences were fused into three modules: The Case For Change, The Chase For Change and The Growth For Change.
In addition to the testimonials garnered during an individual interview session, 80% of the entire participants documented their feedback on knowledge gained and some of these include: “I learnt how to measure and improve on my growth level”, “I learnt how to place my goal over my role as a Teacher”, “I learnt better ways of getting students’ attention while in class without having to flog them with cane”, “Under the concept of Teacher Leader-shift, I learnt that to achieve change in growth, you need to first discover your current growth level and then develop on the 7 dimensions of growth as revealed by the facilitator”, etc.
The programme also achieved enormous success in terms of community involvement as both the Education Secretaries, Principals and other key gatekeepers gave their support to ensure information dissemination and warm reception from the schools at the respective LGAs.
One of the challenges shared by participants was the need for such training to be conducted by the foundation every month to help strengthen their capacities and further enhance their levels of growth. With more support from sponsors and in line with our vision to raise generations of transformational leaders, we hope that the existing gap in teachers’ capacity to deliver quality learning will be mitigated through a broadened implementation of the virtual Teachers Support Programme which was first piloted in 2020 across the six Southern states in Nigeria.
