Every day comes with its own tasks and responsibilities. Today is special as it is filled with a load of tasks and work for me. I began today by attending to my students preparing for WAEC at exactly 7 a.m. You know what it takes, as I had to be in school on time to make this happen. The funny thing is that the students I wanted to teach were not available in large numbers, as only a few of them made it to class as early as possible. What can one call that? Should I say it is an act of irresponsibility? Or should I say the students of this generation don't know what it takes to be serious and get busy? I think the answer lies in the fact that the majority of them rely heavily on assistance. How do I mean by assistance?
Most of the students believe in a helping hand by engaging in examination malpractices. In such cases, what do you expect from them? Maybe I should say that as human beings, we are all guilty of this. When you know you can get assistance, I'm sure you won’t be as concerned about the task at hand. But I know someone who will try to make them get busy no matter what.
The students rely on a helping hand in the form of examination malpractices. What if there is no way such things could happen, particularly if there are supervisors who don't allow it? I do know of some supervisors who never compromise. However, we, the teachers, are in a state of dilemma. The government, which paid the students' fees for WAEC, wants the best results without thinking of the consequences. They are of the opinion that we should not promote students who are not worthy of promotion to the next class. At the same time, we have to deal with the principal of the school, who often tells us to pass most of the students whether they merit it or not. What can a teacher do in such a scenario?
Apart from the morning tasks, I had to enter five different classes to teach the students. The problem I had to face was the large number of students, particularly the adolescent-aged ones. You can imagine how stressful it would be. Imagine being in a class with 160 students at once. The most frustrating part of it is that some students get away with being unruly. How many can you discipline at a time? At times, I tell them to leave the class or kneel down, but this also takes a whole lot of time. It wastes time and makes the work difficult to manage.