5 Post COVID-19 Restriction and Temporal School Closure Tips For The Ghanaian Teacher.

After COVID-19, I believe education in Ghana and the mode of knowledge transmission must greatly transform. We were taken aback when the president gave the restriction directives indicating temporal school closures. Currently, efforts are being made with calls for proposals on how the restrictions can be lifted. One can only hope that the safety protocols would strictly be followed with headteachers submitting some form of measures to the education directorate for further directives.

The adage, "to be forewarned is to be forearmed" became real as majority of us were not well tooled in how to remotely engage our students. In most cases, even contacts including social media handles of guardians and parents of our students. This of course has made it difficult to stay in touch with many of our cherished students. Only a handful could contact us for some form of coaching in order to keep pace with academic work.

In advanced countries, teachers are able to connect to students easily and I believe with the right mindset, the Ghanaian teacher is capable of doing so.

Globally, it is estimated that about "70% of the world's student population" will be affected. And Ghana is not an exception. See (https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse)

This will surely reduce the progress made so far with the education for all programmes.

In this post and with focus on colleague teachers in Ghana, I share five tips that we can all consider in mitigating against the impact of any future recurrence. 

1. A database of students and the contact details of their guardians is a must. 

This can easily be created using the admission register. When created, the school can save it in Google drive for easy accessibility. This can then be used by teachers to reach out to their students while they are at home. Of course there must be guidelines to ensure it is not abused.

2. E-mail addresses, blogs and slides

Each class must have a designated e-mail address where teachers are tasked to send information, lessons and assessment questions for students to access.

3. Explore Technology

There are a lot of classroom technology that can be employed by teachers to help in times like this to monitor students' academic progress. For example Google's education products. See (https://edu.google.com/products/gsuite-for-education/?modal_active=none)

4. Proper Use of Social Media Platforms

Many social media platforms for teachers are not being used well. They have become avenues for partisan politics, funeral announcements, collection of funds, insults and lengthy religious messages, mostly Christian. Teachers hardly follow the goals for creating such platforms, failing to engage in academic and teacher or education-related discussions fruitfully. To make matters worse, administrators of such platforms sit unconcerned and helpless in some instances. This trend must change because we are at a phase where the face of knowledge provision must change to meet global standards.  Teachers must network and create communities for discussing relevant educational issues.

5. The Role of District Training Officers, Educational Policy Makers and Teacher Unions.

The role of other stakeholders cannot be overlooked when it comes to equipping today's teacher in Ghana. As a result the time where we paid lip services when it comes to issues concerning teachers must erode with the passing of time. Right from the training institutions, beginning teacher orientations, in-service training workshops, Professional Learning Communities and Continuous Professional Development engagements, a concious effort must be made to move teaching and learning in Ghana from over reliance on physical classroom delivery to virtual classrooms. This obviously requires great investments. This is where 1 teacher 1 laptop, 1 student 1 tablet and other policy supports come handy. Ban on the use of android phones by students in schools must also be critically looked at.

While I believe that we have been exposed greatly, going back to take the right steps can as well help us greatly.