(photo: sloanreview.mit.edu)
Di pa daw sila kun preparado… The Philippine Star
reported on August 5, 2020 that the Quezon City Public School Teachers
Association during the online conference revealed that they have not yet
received the necessary modules for distance learning from the DepEd. According
to QCPTA president Kristhean Navales, the department has so far only released
guidelines on how to print the modules once they are available. He added that
these guidelines were released just a few days ago, mere weeks before classes
are set to resume.
Navales said he is
unaware of whether DepEd is currently printing modules and questioned the
department's ability to have them ready by August 24.
This can be
considered as the opposite of pro-active actions by educational leaders in the
field. There are some who wait for top-down directives for them to act. The proverbial
manna from heaven is often on the mentality of the majority. When this happens,
chaos and confusion thrive inside organizations.
R.A. 9155 clearly
says that the State shall encourage local initiatives for improving the quality
of basic education. The State shall ensure that the values, needs and
aspirations of a school community are reflected in the program of education for
the children, out-of-school youth and adult learners. Schools and learning centers shall be empowered to make decisions on
what is best for the learners they serve.
The school head, who
may be assisted by an assistant school head, shall be both an instructional
leader and administrative manager. The school head shall form a team with the
school teachers/learning facilitators for delivery of quality educational programs,
projects and services, the Act continues.
School leaders across
the country are grappling with an array of decisions forced on them by the
COVID-19 pandemic. How do we use our resources to protect children and keep
education going? Once the overarching decisions are made, leaders, including
those further down the command chain, will have a myriad of additional choices
to make. Thus, the thrust to create a viable Learning Continuity Plan (LCP) was
encouraged.
To underscore the
case, school leaders are empowered to lead the schools based on the stringent
plans created. But due to the fact that most were unprepared of the pandemic’s
onslaught, lots were empty-handed. There were even some who copied the plans of
others not realizing that the profile of the schools they are managing is
different from those they duplicated.
Mathew Lynch (2020)
mentions that the antithesis of proactive is reactive, which means people react
to the world around them instead of taking steps to affect the outcomes positively.
Proactive educational leaders have a do-it-themselves mindset and approach
problematic situations with enthusiasm. If you want to affect your life and the
lives around you positively, start by learning to control situations, instead
of waiting for things to happen.
To become a proactive
leader, the first thing that one needs to do is to be able to find and isolate
potential issues before they become full-fledged problems. Then the leader can
come up with a solution for solving the issue before it actually becomes widely
known. The process of solving problems before they begin is not easy to do. It
takes a total understanding of the organization and the forces and pressures
that surround it. Then and only then can the education leaders begin to predict
potential issues and landmines with great accuracy.
The pandemic must not
topple down the managerial, leadership and creative processes of leaders who
took oath to serve the people in educating the young. Of course, it is but
normal to feel anxiety and fear… but public service must go on. There is a need
to find ways to let the delivery of education continue.
Responses to the
pandemic within the international education community have varied from heroic
to problematic, as educators, leaders, administrators and education policy
workers navigate shifting information, priorities, resources, and political and
economic concerns. As education leaders have responded to the current crisis,
many challenges and obstacles to providing essential educational services have
emerged.
Additionally, according
to frontiersin.org, questions have
been raised about whether and how students and schools can meet education
policy expectations, how schools can provide adequate support for students,
particularly those with special educational and mental health needs, and how
education leaders, including, but not limited to: principals, head teachers,
superintendents, teacher leaders and so on can collaborate and coordinate with
government, non-profit and other stakeholders to meet student needs.
Exhausting our
capacities and allowing the community to help us can make things happen. There
are resources in our ecology. Paired with proactive actions and the
collaboration that must be present, we can be prepared enough in allowing the
learners to have an alternative way of educating themselves. If we continue to
dwell on WE CAN’T, there is really a tendency that the WE CAN action will be
vague.
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