THE POWER OF A CLASS TEACHER.

When a teacher wants to say something good about their school they always begin by “In my school, but when a teacher wants to say something negative about their school they always begin by saying “In the school where I teach

Every staffroom has that one teacher who will always oppose every brilliant idea from other teachers during staff meetings and briefings. Mostly, these teachers are between 33 and 44 years of age. In most cases, the above 52s and the below 27s are quiet.

Along the same wavelength, in every form we have one particular class that is rarely beaten by other classes. Whether its a full exam, a mock exam, a joint exam, a maths exam, science contest or just a one-question exam, this class mostly defeats the others.

Is it about the entry behaviour? No. When students join form one they are randomly given admission numbers and the classes to join. Classes were not given based on the entry behaviour.

So what is so special about this class that constantly beats others? The class teacher. It is the class teacher that makes the class beat others. To confirm this, wait until the class teacher gets a transfer. If the one inheriting the class will not continue with the momentum of the former class teacher, the class goes down.

• They communicate expectations.
  They are in constant communication with the students. They tell the students the expected outcomes in terms of results, academic success and progress.

• They are close to the management.
  They know that the core business in school is grades. They will always talk to the management concerning the grades of individual students. They focus on cutting the tail and increasing the head.

• They are aggressive.
  These teachers will be found in class at early supervising morning preps. They leave school at late.
  They want to ensure no student sleeps in class or makes noise.

• They are possessive.
  They own the students. They own the performance of the students and also the mistakes of the students. When a student is found in indiscipline case, this teacher takes the individual responsibility to sit down with the student and understand the reason for the case. He guides and counsels.

• They are go getters.
  These teachers set class targets which are realistic. They make a road map and a plan which the students will work towards achieving. They set small targets and easy tasks then progress to big ones. E.g to improve Maths mean score from 5.3 to 5.4. This is psychological because it is a very small improvement but to the mind of the students it is huge because they have improved. This motivates them more hence next time they set a target of 5.6. Then 6 then 6.5. These teachers know what they want. As the form four class sets the school target, they have class target in KCSE.

• They work with numbers.
  In everything they do, they involve numbers. They know numbers never lie. They have agreed that success is a game of numbers. Here is an example of how they use numbers:
  How many more hours for study have we created more than other classes this week?

• They are on the ground.
  They don’t get information about their class from department or the deputy principal. They know everything happening in their class because they are on the ground.

• They focus on ‘How’ and not just ‘What’.
  They don’t tell students to study, they show the students how to study.
  They don’t instruct students to revise, they give them the best revision models.
  They don’t tell students not to sleep in class during preps time, they give the students workable and practical approaches on how to avoid sleeping in class.

• They focus on Consistency and not just Intensity.
  They know that consistency gives fruit to sustainable results while intensity gives instant results.
  They are consistent in their working and that is why they are consistent in their results.

• They focus on performance and not just results.
  When the class does well, they don’t look at the class results in totality, they focus on individual performance.
  They know that class mean score is calculated from the individual students’ mean grades. When they see that a student has been dropping for the last two consecutive exams, they are concerned. They go an extra mile to call the parent or guardian and marshal the subject teachers to help that student to make progress in performance.