A passion for teaching

Only the weekend remains before thousands of schoolchildren flock to school. The long summer holidays are over and the shorter days are drawing in. Come September and most of our students will admit they are ready to go back to school, that the excitement of meeting up with classmates, old or new, of going back to a more orderly life starts to be strongly felt. True, for many this excitement is short lived and will wear off after a short while but this week, in particular, witnesses a feverish activity in thousands of our families and homes to get the children ready for school.

On the other hand, the intense activity to ensure that our schools are ready for the students has been going on throughout the summer months. Construction works, extension and maintenance works, refurbishment, as well as huge administrative tasks involving student and teacher placement, occupied the long summer days for a large number of people. Next week will, undoubtedly, be a crucial one where last-minute hitches have to be resolved as fast as possible. It's all part and parcel of life. I have been told that as minister responsible for education I should spend this weekend on my knees praying for good weather on Monday as a rainy, stormy morning plays havoc with a first day at school.

Over 100 new teachers will be moving into the first stages of their new career. This week I met the majority of them at the tailend of a two-day teachers' induction programme, designed to guide them smoothly into their new work-life. Induction refers to that phase in a teacher's career when s/he is crossing over from a teacher training course into full-time teaching. In the last decade, the Faculty of Education, within the University of Malta, has undertaken various initiatives to find ways and means of improving the initial teacher education programme. An interesting development that has taken place recently is the introduction of induction and mentoring within government policies, as can be seen in the 2006 Education Act and in the 2007 agreement between the government and the Malta Union of Teachers.

Short conversations with some of the new recruits at the end showed up clearly the wisdom of the well-planned activity. One young woman told me that she felt so much better prepared and that most of her fears and apprehensions had been lightened because satisfactory replies had been given to her many unvoiced questions by the speakers at the programme.

I spent some time going through the excellent publication Mentoring And Induction For The Beginning Teacher given to each and every new recruit. The work of Christopher Bezzina, it presents a practical approach to supporting new teachers and to giving them direct, ongoing support as they move into the real world of teaching. As Dr Bezzina so rightly says: "A profession has a responsibility for the well-being of its members as well as its clients". It is our responsibility to make sure that members of the profession retain their passion for teaching. Without the passion, there can be no teaching in the true sense of the word.

It was Passion for Teaching in capital letters I came across at a completely different event in the short span of a few days. Teachers moving into retirement were the ministry's guests last week. I'm not so sure about the retirement where some of them are concerned. In fact, several of them said they would like to carry on teaching as they cannot imagine life without "their children". Forty years on and in spite of the difficulties we hear so much about, the problems encountered and the changes witnessed some of them are still raring to go on, with an enthusiasm that matches that of the new entrants.

And both groups have so much to learn from one another.

Once the new scholastic year has settled in, a consultative document will be launched. It will look at the transition of our students from primary into secondary schools.

We have heard so much of the stressful period that children, parents and students go through at this stage, where life as we would like to be, especially for the children, seems to stop and everything is focused on a few crucial hours. The document will also question our policy on streaming which classifies children at a very early age.

A consultative document is exactly what its name says: it's published for consultation. We will ask for feedback and it is already obvious that, on this subject, this will not be lacking.

I am hoping that the children themselves will be major participants in this exercise.

Ms Cristina is Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport.