The Power of Being Prepared

                                       (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.