Instructional supervision

School is a place where everybody learns including the children and the teachers.This is the place which evolves every day and those who are keen to know more find themselves feeling hungry for more knowledge and every morning is new and different than the previous one.If it is not so then school does not attract the people to it becomes a kind of compulsion for many to go through the rituals of the day to day life.The school should be a happening and dynamic place where children and the teachers do something different and more enduring every day.For this there are certain important steps to be followed by the management and the administrators.The curriculum of the studies should be interesting and challenging for all concerned.The activities planned should involve cognitive,affective and psycho motor skills depending upon the age group of the children.The facilities available should be appropriate .These should be age appropriate and requirement based and not for a show off to the parents and other people.The teachers should also be self motivated and committed to their profession.The most important objective for them is to consider themselves to be  learner.They should become the machine to deliver the same content every year to the different group of the students.This is true that the ones who are concerned not only for the learning of their students but also for their own learning prove to be more helpful to the students than the ones considering themselves knowing every thing.In the last few decades, the picture of the schools have undergone a change and the teachers are being encouraged to update themselves on regular basis so that they could keep pace with fast changing world and education does not remained untouched by the waves of this change.Now the question is what more should the teachers learn and how should they update themselves ?The first important issue is the content to be taught in the class.The teachers must understand the importance of the topic taught in a class and its level.They should know what would be the impact of this on the learning of the children and what behavioral changes they expect after the completion of the topic.Unfortunately not many teachers know why that much content is to be taught in class one and this much in class five.They are doing it because this has been decided by NCERT.Even if it is decided by some outside organisation it is very important for the teacher to understand the answer of all the 'why's'.Not only the reason for the content but also the teacher must know how to teach and what activities will help the students understand the topic easily and the understanding will help the child to achieve enduring knowledge which is not forgotten after the assignment or the examination.The teachers also must know what actions on their part help children be comfortable in the class and the school.They should also be aware of the the latest techniques being used by successful educators in different schools.For this regular teachers' training programmes are very important and all schools should have them in their yearly schedule.In addition to this, day to day supervision of the curriculum transaction is also very important because training is one part but to help the teachers to implement that in an effective manner is other very important aspect of effective teaching learning process.For the effective instructional supervision we need to have some experts who can visit the classes of the teachers on regular basis and based on their observations the teachers can be helped to improve.The supervisor should not act as the fear factor to the teacher but a support to help him/her by providing an honest and frank feedback.Some people ask a question that do you really need supervisor? I strongly feel that change is desirable,necessary and indeed inevitable. We know that number of new teachers joining teaching fraternity is increasing day by day because more schools are being established and the existing schools are expanding.The supervisors can play a significant role in the induction of new teachers and also they can help the experienced teachers to improve as per the need of the hour.I do not mean that the experienced teachers are not good enough but the truth is that there are many teachers who are never guided or advised either due to their being adamant that they know everything or the head feeling may not be comfortable saying anything to the so called experienced teachers.The instructional supervisor is expected to know how to develop curriculum as per the requirement and decide about the teaching learning strategies.The instructional supervisor will also be able to help the teacher to understand the problem faced by the children.I give one simple example. A teacher who has been teaching for many years was supervised by the head of the school because he himself asked for the same.The principal visited the classes of the other teachers but did not feel it necessary to visit this teacher`s class because he was one of the most experienced teachers and the children were quite satisfied with the teaching of the this teacher.When the principal visited and observed the class he found that the teacher was paying more attention to one side of the class and the other side was completely ignored.The questions asked were also directed to a few students and other students were listening.When the principal discussed with the teacher he was shocked to realise his mistake which nobody had told him before.There can be many more things which even the experienced teachers might be doing for long unknowingly.The instructional supervisors can help them to understand their flaws that improves upon the curriculum transaction.
Now who should be the supervisors.There are some schools which have hired people exclusively for this purpose but most of the educationists in our country feel that the head of the school,the HODs and the team leaders or the class representative should be trained and be used for the purpose of the instructional supervision.The role of the supervisor should not be taken as the role of the inspector but as the one who will help the teachers. The supervision should also not be related to the evaluation of the teachers because the moment somebody is evaluated, the helping attitude is lost in the process.For the evaluation of the teacher other methods can be used but supervision should be used to help the teachers to perform better in their class and finally help the students.