Editor,

The Ministry of Education plans to introduce teacher mentoring in the near future. By keeping in mind that this is a new policy going to be implemented, does one need to focus on what issues?

Conventional wisdom requires that if any policy is to be successfully implemented, the policy framers and implementers, need to put into context the policy to be implemented.

From my experience in the teaching and education career, I have always had issues with some School Principals and Inspectors who instead of becoming instructional leaders have gone out of their way and became ‘policemen’ who only mind about a teacher’s presence and absence and the ‘dead silence’ by students in a given classroom setting. To them, learners who have a conversation in class are to be punished without regard to what the conversation was all about.

In their opinion, a teacher who requests that she/he needs internet facilities, only wants to visit his/her email, in total disregard of the fact that a teacher can do research via the web. What leads such managers into this kind of thinking cannot be divorced from the context into which they were taught.

In order to strengthen this new undertaking of teacher mentoring, I wish to suggest that School Principals and Inspectors appreciate that there must be a paradigm shift on how they conduct their business in schools.

They need to be reminded that, they are the leaders in building teamwork, advocating a constructive way of teaching, a lifelong career and a professional culture that favours research by teachers.

Bonaventure Mujyeneza
Teacher Service Commission