Clarification of responsibilities

One of the things that teachers most complain about in the educational profession setting is not knowing exactly what is expected of them. Teachers have performed many roles, like invigilation in National Examinations, apart from the normal classroom teaching and may have carried out many of these duties repeatedly. Yet, at times they may feel uncertain as to precisely what their responsibilities are, which decisions they are authorized to make on their own, and in what areas they may exercise initiatives without infringing on someone’s else duties. Fortunately, some of these expectations were brought up before by my Principal a few years ago. But with the large number of new teachers joining the school, I feel that this matter needs to be brought up again.

As a new or experienced teacher alike, it can be maddening to realize that you were expected to do something you never realized was a part of your responsibilities, and it can be almost as frustrating to learn that you could have make a decision that no one ever told you that you were empowered to make. The standard way is to conduct a staff briefing before the start of the National examinations. So it is important to gather everyone to attend such briefing. But I suggest another way, which is to first survey the teachers, and then let the teacher’s People Developer have a brief conversation with each of them about their specific duty responsibilities. This I feel is more personalized. Some teachers are worried about meeting up with their People Developer. I believe that we need to make clear that they have not done anything wrong and it is just that the People Developer want to “make sure that we are all on the same page” about who’s doing what and where each teacher’s area of responsibility begins and ends. Through this conversation, I think that we may find that certain teachers assume that they are able to do certain matters on their own that really need to be addressed at different levels of the school, while others feel that particular duties are not their job even though, as People Developer may believe that they should be performing these tasks.

I am sure that clearing the air in this way can sometimes cause some hurt feelings or grumbling for a while. But if each People Developer handle the situation with tact and diplomacy, the end result will be a staff that better understands what the school need each teacher to do and why.