BE COMMITTED TO YOUR PROFESSION — SOBOTIE (PAGE 11)

THE Principal of the Kumasi Campus of the University of Education, Winneba (UEW), Professor Steve Sobotie, has urged teachers to be innovative and committed to their profession.
That, he said, would enable them to address the numerous challenges facing the educational sector to enhance accelerated socio-economic development.
Addressing delegates to the third Ashanti Regional quadrennial conference in Kumasi, Prof Sobotie said it was equally important for the government to initiate prudent measures that would produce more competent and qualified professional teachers to meet national demands.
About 450 delegates from the region attended the three-day conference, which was on the theme, “The teacher, the pivot of human capital and national development — His professional and socio-economic challenges”.
Prof Sobotie stressed the need for the government to develop adequate academic facilities and expand existing ones that would effectively accommodate students at all levels.
The principal urged teachers to realise that their place in society was of vital importance so they should act as a pivot for the transmission of intellectual traditions and technical skills from generation to generation.
“You can never truly be a teacher unless you allow the skills of learning philosophies burn its own flame continuously,” he advised.
Prof Sobotie noted that since many teachers might have difficulty in understanding all the changes, challenges and policies that were taking place in the educational sector, there was the need for their mother associations to continuously build their capacities and expand their horizons to put their members in a better position to meet all challenges.
He advised GNAT “to make compromises that will allow teacher unions to move things in the direction they wish, while at the same time being able to make concessions”.
In his address, the Vice-Chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Prof Kwasi Kwafo Adarkwa, challenged teachers to adopt innovative measures that would make it possible for them to find “an antidote to the spate of student indiscipline which is gaining currency in some of our institutions”.
He said teachers could meet such challenges to bring students on course and nurture them to develop their potential because teachers had the know-how to inspire students and impart knowledge that could mould the characters of students from different social backgrounds .
He said since the teaching profession was very challenging, it was important for teachers not only to be patient to enable them to deliver but they should also inspire and rekindle academic interest among their students for them to appreciate their value in society and work towards that.
In an address read on his behalf, the Ashanti Regional Minister, Mr Kofi Opoku Adusei, said since teachers served as role models for students in the socialisation process, it was important for them to devise means that would always draw their students closer to them as a way of creating sustainable harmonious relationship.