Principal decision

Some HMs tend to repeatedly select the same teachers for courses.
TEACHER TALK
BY MALLIKA VASUGI

DILLA returned from her one-week kursus (course) in a rather sulky mood. It was totally out of character for her because if ever there was a teacher in school who actually looked forward to attending week-long in-service courses, Dilla was the one.
Another colleague, Ling, who had done more than her fair share of taking over Dilla’s classes when she was away, once remarked a little wryly that in her opinion, Dilla “embraced the thought of going for week-long professional development courses with the passion people usually reserved for affairs.”
Once Dilla had even volunteered to attend a course for physical and health education teachers, although it was of no interest to her.
The only association she ever had with the subject was doing one relief period for a teacher who was on sick leave.
She was positively glowing when she came back. Five glorious days away from school in a wonderfully luxurious beach resort. Six meals a day in the company of rugby-football coach type hunks.
It makes you feel that this teaching life isn’t half bad after all.”
“So what happened this time?” I asked as she listlessly stirred her coffee and took an unenthusiastic bite out of the limp leftover-from-the morning-recess curry puff.
Dilla gave me an ugly look, frowned at the ustaz who had just sat down at the table next to us and shouted a dire warning to the two students who were still hanging around the school canteen.
“I will never attend another course in my life,” she said, finally setting her teacup down noisily and startling the elderly ustaz who hastily gulped down the rest of his coffee and asked for the bill.
“Never! It was the most boring course I had ever attended in all my 20 teaching years. It was one boring ceramah after another. From dawn to sundown.
“People with straight serious faces intently taking notes – and revising them after tea.”
“Look,” she said with an earnest expression on her face, “can you honestly see me in that kind of crowd?”
“Well it was for your own professional development,” I said “and you did volunteer to go, and if I remember correctly, you volunteered quite heartily.”
Dilla frowned again. “Professional development? The only kind of development I remember getting is here.” She pointed to her waist and sighed. “Two whole kilos - the food was the most exciting thing I remembered.
“The next time,” she said, “you hear me volunteering to replace any teacher who has her leg in a plaster cast or is on maternity leave, give me a sharp thwack on the head with your record book or jab me with the edge of your ghastly wooden giant compasses,” she said.
Another friend, Annette, whom I met up with recently, sighed for exactly the opposite reason.
“I don’t know what it is with my principal,” she said. “Each time there is a letter for me from the district or state education department requiring me to attend meetings or training courses for my professional development, it never gets to me.
“When I ask where the letter went, the office staff tell me that it is with the principal, who has decided that my services are ‘needed’ more in the school than elsewhere, and therefore I am not allowed to leave school.
“Can she actually do that?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it be a breach of some kind of official protocol? She could get into trouble, couldn’t she, by keeping the official letters from you? How would she explain that to the people higher up?”
“Well,” said Annette, “she has her ways. When she knows that there is no option but to allow me to go for these meetings, she shows her displeasure and never fails to make innuendos about what could happen to my laporan tahunan prestasi (annual appraisal) marks.
“Sometimes, some principals forget that the teaching staff under them is not their personal property,” remark-ed Mr Lim, a senior Maths teacher.
They also forget that just like them, teachers also have to be given opportunities for personal professional development, even if it means that they have to leave the school for certain periods of time.
A teacher, who is never given the chance to venture out once in a while to learn new things, interact professionally with those from different schools or even participate in co-curricular activities will eventually dry up, get stuck in a rut and lose interest in teaching.”
“I have this theory,” Lim continued. “Some school principals are reluctant to allow their teachers to leave school because they are afraid their teachers will eventually become ‘better’ than them. ‘Better’ as in more knowledgeable and well-informed.”
Principals probably feel that when their teachers mature professionally they could become a threat to their own positions as chief administrator in the school. It could be some form of insecurity. Or, on the other hand, it could be a genuine case of putting students’ interest first.
I guess only the principals themselves can answer that. And I suppose we cannot ignore the fact that there are teachers who use every conceivable excuse just to get away from school and avoid teaching duties.
Apart from having a short “in-service holiday”, they come back without having gained or contributed much to anyone else or the teaching service. What is worse, all the time they were away, some other teacher had to take on extra duties and fill in for them.
I knew the commitment Annette had towards her job, and I truly sympathised with her for having such a hard time with her principal.
I also reflected on how blessed I have been all my years as a teacher for having principals who had been really supportive each time I had to leave the school to attend or facilitate courses or participate in teachers’ events.
I was thinking about how difficult it would be to work under someone like Annette’s principal when Dilla rushed up to me waving a letter in her hand with the familiar Jabatan Pelajaran (Education Department) letterhead.
“Course-lah,” she said waving the letter under my nose. “Next week. Four days. Four-star hotel. Smack in the heart of the city. They say batik is really cheap there. Imagine, now I have to repack the clothes I unpacked. Or maybe I should just get new clothes. What do you think?”