Vary teaching techniques to whip up interest of students – Teachers urged

Mrs Nsiah-Asamoah

The Tema Metropolitan Director of Education, Mrs Margaret Nsiah-Asamoah, has charged teachers in the metropolis to vary their teaching techniques to whip up the interest of students in learning.

She observed that without the adoption and application of innovative, child-centered methods, teachers were not likely to realise the improvements they expect in their students.

Mrs Nsiah-Asamoah made the observations at the district’s School Performance Appraisal Meeting (SPAM) organised by the Tema Metro Directorate of Education held at the Chemu Senior High School on Tuesday.

SPAM is a major calendar activity of the Ghana Education Service (GES) which brings together educational stakeholders, such as teachers, parents, students and opinion leaders to take stock of sector developments at the district level.

Mrs Nsiah-Asamoah observed that students of today were exposed to several distractions which ‘steal their attention from learning and other curricular activities.’

“We need to help our students to love their studies, not telenovelas on TV. They are children and do not fully understand the technological distractions modernity has thrown at them. Let’s therefore vary our techniques and save them,” The Metropolitan Director of Education stressed.

At the Tema District SPAM, participants – i.e. the Metro Director of Education, circuit supervisors (CSs), teachers, students and community members – deliberated on ways to improve teaching and learning in the metropolis.

Challenges identified by the participants at the SPAM meeting, were the increase in teenage pregnancy, the patronage of telenovelas and the use of mobile phones by students.

Consequently, they proposed among other things the adoption of innovative teaching methods such as targeted teaching, enhanced engagements between parents and teachers, and strict monitoring of students in doing their homework by parents.

Touching on the performance of students in the district, Mrs Nsiah-Asamoah indicated that though there was still room for improvement, students in Tema performed better at the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) and West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) in 2018.

According to her, the analyses received from GES indicated that last year’s BECE and WASSCE results were better than the previous years.

She therefore called on all stakeholders, particularly parents and civil society organisations to complement the efforts of government to develop education in Tema and the country as a whole.

A pupil of Archbishop Andoh Basic School, Miss Slavolia Sobbin advised her colleagues to identify their “enemies of learning,” such as the watching of telenovelas, and “kill them” by concentrating on their studies to achieve the targets they had set for themselves.

From Norman Cooper, Tema  

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