The 4 th World Teacher s Day in Thailand and 12 th UNESCO-APEID International Conference: Quality Innovations for Teaching and Learning Dato Dr.

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1 The 4 th World Teacher s Day in Thailand and 12 th UNESCO-APEID International Conference: Quality Innovations for Teaching and Learning Dato Dr. Haji Ahamad bin Sipon, Director of SEAMEO Secretariat Personal Leadership Introduction It is indeed a pleasure to be able to share with you my experience, my concerns and my observations of the teaching profession. My particular focus is on prospective teachers who will be joining a profession which frequently demands them to place the need of others ahead of themselves. In such situation, practising teachers sometimes lose directions of their own life and fail to establish a clear path for themselves. Their world revolves around their work disregarding other important aspects of life. At times, they believe that they have no control over different events which occur in their life. My contention is that all teachers need to be personal leaders. Amongst others, they need to know that they have a great degree of control over their own outcomes and circumstances. They need to have passion for continual growth and improvement and acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses and use them to propel their life in a positive direction. This will prepare them to become better individuals and in turn, excellent teachers. I believe this should start at the teacher preparation stage itself. My talk today will basically revolve around the above mentioned issues. First, I will relate my observation of teachers professional journey throughout their teaching career and provide an overview of what I believe have been affecting teachers universally and how they react to them. In what follows, I will talk about the concept of personal leadership, a quality which I believe all teachers should possess in order to progress in life within the profession and outside the profession. Finally, I will discuss why and how personal leadership should be incorporated in teacher preparation programme so that prospective teachers can be educated, trained and groomed to become outstanding individuals. Only outstanding and well balanced individuals will be able to develop our students to realise their full potential. An Overview of Teachers Professional Journey Like any other professionals, those who become teachers would normally work for a period of 30 to 40 years. They would start as junior teachers, and later progress the 1

2 career ladder as senior teachers, school principals and other positions in schools. Some would progress to become education officers in the ministry of education; whilst others would become state education department directors, directors or undersecretaries of a division, deputy director general of education, and ultimately, one would hold the post of the director general of education. For many of these teachers, they would occupy numerous important positions during their career. Throughout the duration of about 35 to 40 years, teachers would be in position to influence many people including students, colleagues, parents and various stakeholders. This is because teachers are public figures and role models especially for those under their care. Teachers are considered well informed to the extent that what they relate could influence policy. Nonetheless, like other professionals, teachers would face many issues and challenges that would make their working life pleasant, meaningful, bearable, or otherwise, for themselves and others. To this end, some would be able to deal with the issues and challenges effectively, whilst others might find them overwhelming. As teachers progress in their profession, they would attend numerous workshops, courses and seminars to improve their subject content, pedagogical knowledge, instructional and managerial skills to complement the skills and knowledge they received during the initial training. Some would also undergo additional training to acquire further field experiences. With the initial and in service training, many would become excellent teachers and educational administrators, on condition that they take the initiatives to apply or adapt and adopt the skills and knowledge gained from the experiences to their work. Some of these so-called excellent teachers, however, have the tendency to be fully committed to their job that they ignore other aspects of their life. They may sacrifice the time they should be spending with the family, ignore their health, and their social life outside work becomes virtually non-existent. These are teachers who give priority to their work. In this respect, I believe it might be misleading to label them as excellent. Excellent teachers should be those with all rounded personality and able to balance all aspects of life. Returning to the issue of training and courses, some teachers remain mediocre despite the experiences, skills and knowledge they supposedly gained. They remain static 2

3 in their skills and knowledge. These teachers perhaps view teaching merely as a means for them to gain financial reward with no particular purpose or values attached. They are complacent, detached and unwilling to move on and explore different avenues in their teaching career. They become unproductive, depressed, and sad as well as suffer from burnt-out. They could not see the way forward and find life as a teacher with new ideas and technologies troublesome. They are unable to cope with changes nor able to keep up with them. On the extreme, few might resort to drugs and indulge in activities of nonbelievers. Without faith, some become lost in the ever-changing educational and social world. For these teachers, their life may be out of balance. My concern is that teachers should lead a balanced life. As it is, great leaders and successful individuals throughout time have been known to have balance in their life. Instead of living to work, they work to live. I believe this is particularly apt at this point in time because we are currently talking about human capital development. There is a strong focus on human capital development, particularly in education. In developing human capital, students are as important as teachers. Teachers need to be able to develop and lead themselves. Teachers should have clear perspectives of the important things in life and find priorities in them so that they become more balanced persons. Teachers who are stable intellectually, physically, emotionally and socially would be better educators as they would be able to deal with the vicissitudes of life. It is therefore timely that we guide teachers in personal leadership, particularly those who will be joining the profession, and probably will stay in the profession for the next 35 years. With personal leadership, teachers would be better equipped to face their professional journey. Personal leadership is a concept, perhaps relatively new to education, but essential, for teachers to deal with their professional as well as personal life so that they become exceptional educators. Personal Leadership in the Teaching Profession In order to continue my discussion on the need for teachers and educators to lead a balanced life, I believe it is important to clarify the related concept of personal leadership and what it could mean to the teaching profession. 3

4 The idea of personal leadership was initially introduced in the mid 1990 s by Drs. J. Ramsey, Barbara F. Schaelti and Gordon C. Watanabe. As the term suggests, personal leadership is about one s state of mind and heart whereby one takes leadership of one s experience. It is not about leadership in the traditional sense of leading others; nonetheless, it does offer the possibility of a creative and inspiring relationship to work, family, friends and colleagues. It is about a way of being and of interacting with the world that begins from the inside out (Transition Dynamics, 2008). In other words, it can be viewed as how one leads one s life before one leads others. According to Thomas (2002), personal leadership is a concept related neither to a position nor a title. Personal leadership is a trait and can be elaborated as the desire of an individual to take care of his or her own life. It is about individuals outlook on life and their role in the world. What is important is that personal leadership does not come easily to a person, nor does it require a magical formula. Instead, personal leadership requires commitment to balance, a sense of purpose and values. Thus, personal leadership can be achieved by anyone and everyone. Personal leadership necessitates one to have the ability and desire to crystallize one s thinking and establish a specific direction and destination for one s own life. Similarly as stated by Farcht (2007), with courage, choice, determination and commitment, anyone can acquire, accomplish or become whatever one visualizes one s future. Paul J. Meyer, the founder of Leadership Management International and a living example of personal development, success and leadership sees personal leadership as the self-confident ability to crystallize your thinking and establish an exact direction for your own life, to commit yourself to moving in that direction, and then to take determined action to acquire, accomplish, or become whatever you identify as the ultimate goal for your life (2008). From one perspective, personal leadership is important in the teaching profession because teaching is an extremely demanding profession. This has been acknowledged by various educational organisations and institutions. Amongst others, teaching requires in-depth knowledge of subject content, age-specific pedagogy, and many varied skills such as patience, leadership, and creativity, just to name a few. On a more philosophical level, teaching is about experiencing life through teaching others. It is 4

5 about having passion for life, appreciating students accomplishment, confidence and patience, understanding, having compassion for students and the ability to look at life in a different way and explain a topic in a different way. Not everyone who joins the profession has the aura to become a teacher. Some who were trained eventually leave the profession because they feel they were unsuitable. Some were asked to leave as they were not progressing nor contributing to the development of the children under their care. However, some teachers grow professionally despite the fact that teaching was not their first choice for a career. These teachers tend to seek new knowledge and skills to develop as teachers. More importantly, these teachers may have personal leadership qualities to help them make sense of their life, their teaching career and how to improve on them. From another perspective, personal leadership would be able to help teachers to deal with life in general. This is because teaching is not a nine-to-five job. Teaching requires teachers to sacrifice their free time, to the extent, as I mentioned in the first part of my speech, some teachers neglect their own family, their health, their social life and even their commitment to God, as they get side-tracked in the work. It is therefore, important that we equip teachers especially those who would be joining the profession, through their teacher initial training programme, tools and strategies to develop personal leadership so that they could have a more fulfilling and meaningful life as individuals. Personal Leadership in Teacher Preparation Often when we talk about initial training or teacher preparation programme, we tend to focus amongst others on subject matter preparation and how much is needed by prospective teachers, similarly, pedagogical preparation and how much is needed by these teachers, and clinical training for classroom practice (Wilson, Floden, and Ferrini- Mundy, 2001). The objective is to furnish these teachers-to-be with knowledge and skills as well as to find ways of improving teacher education programme and practices. What we neglect to do in the teacher preparation courses is to equip teachers with strategies to live as a teacher and as an individual. We take for granted that once teachers are in the profession, they would be able to adapt and adjust their life according to the demands of their professional, social and family life. As I tried to put forward earlier, when teachers encounter the reality of working life, they are faced with issues and challenges that may 5

6 affect their personal as well as professional life. Covey (1990), in his work on the habits of effective people, similarly suggests that personal and professional life is inseparable; as both tend to complement and impact one another in most profound way. In this respect, I would like to suggest that besides providing prospective teachers with the subject content, pedagogical knowledge and field experiences, we should provide them with tools, knowledge and strategies to become well balanced persons in all aspects of life. We must help them to find the strategies to prioritize and engage on each of the priorities. We have to provide strategies that help teachers to develop their potential to deal with expected or unexpected issues and challenges. More importantly, we need to educate teachers that they have the control over key events in their life (Eade, 2008). Many people including teachers only develop and use less than 25 percent of their potential and tend to live on mediocrity. Most often, these people believe that they are unable to exert significant influence over notable development in their life. Nonetheless, there are proven strategies to help people achieve happy, effective, efficient, productive as well as well balanced life and that they have the control to realise their full potential. At this juncture, let me briefly share with you my first encounter with the concept of personal leadership. About eight years ago while serving as the Deputy Director General of Education at the Ministry of Education Malaysia, I had the opportunity to follow a Leadership Management International Programme on Effective Personal Leadership and The Total Person Concept. Subsequently as I became the Director General of Education, I realized that although I had achieved almost all the goals that I set for in life, including, the highest position that a teacher could accomplish, I had not given much attention to some aspects of my life. I was too engrossed with my work that I almost neglected among others, aspects of my health. Since then, I decided to concentrate more on different areas of my life and I find my life to be more fulfilling and meaningful. I just wished I had followed the programme earlier. Realizing this, while still in office I ensured some of my officers followed the personal leadership programme because I believe the training to be beneficial to them as individuals and to the Ministry of Education. These officers appreciated the experience and equally found their life to be more rewarding. The officers became better 6

7 persons and successful in many areas of their profession while not neglecting other areas of their life. My intention here is not to suggest a definitive module for initial teacher training programme though I strongly advocate that personal leadership should be a component in the programme. I believe experts in the area would be able to design a better module than I am able to do so. My aim is to give an overview of aspects of life in which prospective teachers should give priorities and balance, so as to prepare them as professional teachers. I believe these prospective teachers should be made to understand how the following aspects of life, namely, financial and career, social and cultural, family and home, physical and health, mental and educational, and spiritual and ethical impact on their professional and personal life at present and in the future, and the importance of balancing them. My proposition is based on the Total Person Concept which empowers prospective teachers to balance all the different aspects of life to help them to do selfevaluations and set personal values, priorities and goals (Meyer, 2008). Now, I will elaborate on the different aspects of life, personal to teachers as well as to others that should be fairly deliberated. First, I would like to talk about aspects related to Financial and Career. I strongly believe that prospective teachers should be made to perceive teaching as a rewarding profession with fantastic career prospect and development opportunities: Teachers should be taught and guided to enjoy their work, give their best and make the work a calling and feel that they are making a contribution to society and the country; Teachers should be made aware that they have great potential and that opportunities are available for them to maximise their potential either within the classroom or in a leadership role where they would have overall responsibility for the management of school and the education its pupils receive; Teachers should be made to realise that teaching is a dynamic process and a learning process where as one develops as a teacher, one will increase one s skills and knowledge; 7

8 Teachers should be made to realise that within the classroom they have the power to be creative and innovative, and that their enthusiasms can change the way children are taught, and Teachers should be made to aware that life as a teacher is very comfortable that the salary enables them to plan for their children s education as well as their own retirement, providing they know how to manage their finance. Another aspect of life that prospective teachers should consider is the Social and Cultural aspects. Prospective teachers should be made to realise that social and cultural activities would enrich their life and make them better individuals and inspiring teachers: Teachers should be encouraged to spend time with friends whom they could share their joy, experiences and knowledge, whom they could consult in time of need, and those whom would make them feel good and happy; Teachers should be helped to develop interests in culture and arts so that they could widen their perspectives and look at things differently, and Teachers should be encouraged to enjoy life and allocate time for recreational activities as well as outdoor events. Family and Home is an important aspect of life that one could not do without. Prospective teachers should be aware that a stable family and home contribute to their well being as individuals and as professional teachers: Teachers should be made to realise that quality time spent at home would enhance their family relationships; Teachers should be aware that their family deserve to be respected and appreciated and that they are equally important; Teachers should be taught how to manage delicate relationships of home and family, and Teachers should be made to realise that they need to use their personal standards rather than society s standards when dealing with family matters. In order to embark on the teaching profession, Physical and Health aspects are equally essential to ensure teachers could perform effectively. Prospective teachers should be made to understand the importance of practising healthy lifestyle: 8

9 Teachers should be made to realise that our physical well being is the most precious gift that needs to be appreciated; Teachers should be taught how to look after their body so that they would be fit to fulfil their responsibilities; Teachers should be taught the benefits of balanced diet and good nutrition on their physical conditions; Teachers should be encouraged to engage in physical activities and that exercises would make them feel better, healthier and enable them to enjoy life more, and Teachers should be made to realise that it is very expensive to be sick and unhealthy. Similarly, prospective teachers should strive to continually improve their mental capacity and Educational qualifications. Prospective teachers should be encouraged to have educational goals and establish specific directions towards achieving those goals to improve themselves as teachers and as individuals: Teachers should be made to realise that they need to grow and develop mentally and educationally; Teachers should be encouraged to keep seeking new knowledge for professional and personal growth; Teachers should be encouraged to invest in continuing education on a regular basis to become effective, and Teachers should be encouraged to challenge their mental capacity to realise their full potential. Finally, I would like to touch on the Spiritual and Ethical aspects. These profound aspects of life determine one s personal values and effect change in one s life. Strong spiritual and ethical values are the foundation that prospective teachers build upon in all areas of their life; in their professional and personal life, to become excellent role models and mentors to their students: Teachers should be reminded that religion is crucial in finding satisfaction in life; Teachers should be reminded to reconcile their relationship with a higher power; 9

10 Teachers should be reminded that religion provides the guiding principles for their personal and social endeavours; Teachers should be reminded to be religious and that it is important to practice their religion, and Teachers should be reminded to always seek ways to improve their religious practice. In sum, prospective teachers should realise the importance of the different aspects of life and ensure that each aspect is given priority because only then they would be able to lead a full life which is satisfactory and productive. In order for the teachers to be able to give equal attention to all aspects of life that is important to them and to others, they need to be able to practise personal leadership. To begin with, they need to know what personal leadership is all about and then continue to reflect on their life, what they aspire for their future and work towards those aspirations by taking into consideration everything that is pertinent to them. I believe these to be the heart of teacher preparation programme. If we strive for teachers to continually develop in order to realise the full potential of students, we have to prepare teachers for personal growth and fulfilment, in addition to equipping them with skills and knowledge related to teaching and education. Concluding Remarks To conclude, I would like to say that life as a teacher is highly demanding and extremely challenging. Some teachers will be able to face the demands and challenges positively and use them as a learning experience to become better teachers and better individuals. They will not let these demands and challenges interfere with their personal life and they have the ability to separate them so that they do not easily lose sight of other important aspects of their life. This is what every teacher should be able to do in the midst of their busy and hectic schedule. For those teachers who are in service, they have to learn to realign their priorities so that things which are important in their life are not ignored and neglected. However, my focus in this talk has been on prospective teachers and how we should start looking at preparing them with tools and strategies to balance their life. I would like to emphasise that by just focussing on content knowledge, pedagogical skills and field experiences, prospective teaches will not be adequately prepared to face the profession. I have tried to 10

11 illustrate teachers professional journey and the extent to which teachers progress professionally and personally over the 30 to 40 years of teaching seem to differ from one teacher to another. Thus, what we need to include in teacher preparation programme is guidance on personal leadership. In particular, how prospective teachers could learn how to survive, progress and develop as individuals. I believe we need to act now by ensuring that all teachers can be personal leaders. Through this effort, it is hoped that prospective teachers can become outstanding and inspiring educators for their students and other stakeholders. With this, I hope my talk today has provided some valuable insights into the issue of personal leadership and teacher preparation. On this note, I thank you. References Eade, D. M. (2008). Goal Setting. Strategies for a Balanced Life. Retrieved 9 June 2008 from Farcht, J. (2007). Leadership Development. Retrieved 6 June 2008 from Covey, S.R. (1990). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. New York: Fireside. Meyer, P. J. (2008). Effective Personal Leadership. Retrieved 26 November 2008 from Thomas, G. (2002). Just what is Personal Leadership? One Leader s Perspectives. WeLEAD online Magazine. Leadingtoday.org Retrieved 6 June 2008 from Transition Dynamics. (2008). Personal Leadership. Retrieved 6 June 2008 from Wilson, S.M., Floden, R.E. and J. Ferrini-Mundy. (2001). Teacher Preparation Research: Current Knowledge, Gaps and Recommendations. University of Michigan: Centre for the Study of Teaching and Policy. 11