BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – WITH the current trend in which many students have been perceived to deviate from set standards and adopt those of their peers, it is suggested that teachers employ “transformational leadership” as a corrective measure.
This theory was posited by Chief Education Officer (CEO) in the Ministry of Education, Patrick Welcome while speaking with teachers and other professionals of the Dr. William Connor Primary School during their Staff Professional Development Day. The exercise was held on Friday, February 5, 2010 at the Foundation for National Development’s conference room.
Welcome suggested to the professionals that many of the problems experienced by governments, students, etc., are as a direct result of bad or poor leadership and conversely, success is a by-product of good leadership.
The CEO explained that teachers – those who are charged with the responsibility of imparting knowledge to the nation’s youths and are responsible for exposing and instilling certain norms and values in children, - are themselves, leaders and “have the task to transform the minds of our boys and our girls”.
Because of the serious nature of this task, Welcome encouraged teachers to look past the principles of leadership and adopt those of “transformational leadership”. He described this form of leadership – in classroom setting – as teachers effecting and creating positive change in their students by exemplifying good leadership.
“All of us, believe it or not, are leaders in our own right. We have the task to transform the minds of our boys and our girls, and so the kind of leadership style that I want to refer to...is one you call transformational leadership and it has to do with change, creating change. If reading is the problem in the school, the Dr. William Connor Primary School, the leadership skills that would be employed would be those that would address (those) issues…
“It means that the leadership of the school should be aware of the needs of the school, aware of the difficulty of the students. I believe in our schools, we have many (students) who dropped through the cracks because we are not good leaders; we are not able to recognise those who have fallen through the cracks, as it were. No wonder, sometime ago, a principal stood up in a meeting and said that 65 percent of the students that enter the school couldn’t read. Somebody missed the need, somebody missed that diagnosis, somebody dropped the ball and 65 percent of the students went to the school unable to attack the basic skills because they aren’t able to read.”
He explained that one of the qualities of an excellent transformational leader is identifying the needs of the ones he leads and crafting ways of meeting them.
“As leaders, once we identify the needs of our students, we must then prepare ourselves to address them. A good leader is always prepared and so it is important that we prepare our work. So no teacher should ever enter the classroom unprepared. No teacher should ever enter a session with no work preparation. It’s important and it is serious because it’s when you are prepared then you are making yourself equipped to deal with the needs that you have identified.”
Welcome expressed that teachers, as transformational leaders, should “model a particular kind of behavior” which would influence students to hold dear the virtues of respect, punctuality and other characteristics of good leaders.
“Tomorrow is a serious time to come. We must have serious people leading us tomorrow, and if we are to create serious people for the serious times, then we ourselves must become serious. Serious in the way we deal with parents when they come to the school; serious in the way we deal with students when they are to be disciplined; serious in the way you relate to each other as you work towards the benefits for our boys and girls.”
