Looking after the schools in six villages here in Pakistan is a huge task that requires constant monitoring. We face many challenges, most of which are long-standing issues. A renewed vision with an action plan for these schools is needed. One aim of that plan is to train teachers and provide them with the necessary skills for effective teaching. This includes class preparation, such as lesson planning and syllabus breakdown, to ensure smooth progression through the lessons over the entire year. It is our hope that the teachers will develop not just skills for good teaching but also a passion for honing young minds in the village and in turn this will advance in their careers. Many teachers‘ educational skills are not up to standard, so there is a need for workshops on class preparation and teaching strategies.
We have a total of 17 teachers in six primary schools, which is insufficient considering that the six schools cater to children from kindergarten right up to class five. Many of the teachers have to manage two to three classes in one setting. Both the children and the teachers suffer when the teacher is unable to cope with the demands of this situation. The workshops help teachers to devise strategies on how to manage classrooms of different abilities.
A constant challenge is children‘s erratic class attendance due to seasonal migration for work. Our children are mostly Parkari Kohli Christians and Hindus; one school has a few Muslims. They come from families of Haris or farm workers who earn a daily wage. Most of the schools are built on land owned by the Church. Children have easy access to these schools on foot but during harvest seasons – which could be several periods during the year as different crops are cultivated over the course of a year, the children are taken by their parents wherever they go for work. This disturbs the rhythm of the school and affects the aptitude of the children to learn. A priority for a poor family is putting food on the table and so education is considered peripheral.
Through the workshops we hope to be able to respond to this problem by encouraging our teachers to follow-up on the children most affected by these migrations by meeting the parents to discourage the practice. They will hopefully also formulate a programme which will enable the children to catch-up on the lessons when they return.
When I applied for college, I had a feeling that teaching was not for me, I felt that I didn’t have the right attitude and the drive to be a teacher or to be involved in education. Yet here in Pakistan, together with my a fellow Filipino Columban, Fr. Jerry Lohera, we are juggling parish work, looking after six village schools, and I am also doing a teaching stint in the minor seminary of the diocese, something I didn‘t expect to be doing. The call is to go beyond how I see myself and my leanings and to look at how to courageously respond to what is there before us – in this case, encouraging our teachers to be noble educators.
The odds are enormous and they could weaken our resolve on many issues. “It is tough in the mission!” one confrere exclaimed. In any mission work there is a call to push one‘s self to advance gospel values. In this case, it means ensuring that the teachers have the vision and the skills for their vocation as educators. The wrong attitude affects not only those who render the service but those at the receiving end; the future of the children in the village is at stake.
