Schools should hire equal number of teachers per field
Since the outbreak of Covid-19, teachers all over the country have to undergo different adjustments just to still cater to the needs of the learners even though face to face interaction is highly prohibited. Now, learners have to deal with either online classes (mostly applicable for college students and in the private schools only), modular learning (most public schools are using this and partly those in the private schools), and or both medium of instruction, either way, that will surely cater education to learners.
Talking about giving modular lessons in the public schools, it has been a roller coaster effect since the last dry run of module distribution was done. The preparation was very stressful for the parts of the teachers because of the bulk of the activities and modules that have to be printed on time. Adding to the problem are the minimal number of bond papers allotment and the number of printers that will be used in the reproduction of the modules as well as the activity sheets. In an honest preview, most public schools have only one printer commonly shared with all teachers. In short, teachers must use their own printers and ink to make sure they can reproduce the modules according to the number of students they have. By the time this problem popped up, by then the teachers made sure that they gave all their efforts to remedy the situation, but it seemed very impossible to cope up with those teachers handling two or more subjects at the same time.
This situation is mostly seen in the secondary schools wherein a teacher is given another subject not her field of expertise (a TVE teacher given MAPEH subjects for example). In the elementary schools, this is not a problem since each teacher is only having a small number of students to cater to but in the secondary schools wherein the number of students in not even equal to the ratio of the number of teachers, then this is a very big problem.
The school should really see to it that they hire enough teachers in the different fields so that there is a fair share of work and it will not hinder the flow of the activities needed. I have a colleague, he is a TVE teacher in our school but he is way more busy compared to the others because he was given MAPEH subjects in which there are three (3) sections each with 40 students each section, imagine the situation? He will really need to find time in printing all the modules from Music, Arts, P.E, and Health separately in those 120 students excluding that of his major subject. Instead of focusing more on his major subject, he can neither tend to it since he will prepare the subject not his field of expertise. Our school has been asking for a MAPEH teacher ever since but our division office is still keeping hold of the items maybe for a reason.
Personally, in my own opinion, each school should really hire enough teachers enough to cater to all the number of students in the school. It is not that we can’t teach other subjects but since secondary teachers have their major field of expertise, then let us try to practice teaching focusing on our field of expertise to be more effective especially now that we are in the middle of a crisis and we need to make sure that our modules are really vertical to our competencies. A teacher will be more effective in his own field. – Avril | Helpline PH
