Consider teachers’ mental welfare for Jamaica’s economic success, says JTA president

WESTERN BUREAU:

Dr Mark Smith, president of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA), says the island cannot become economically viable or successful without taking the emotional and mental welfare of its teachers into consideration while noting that investing in the education sector must go beyond just lip service.

Smith was speaking yesterday during the JTA’s 2024 Education Symposium at the West Jamaica Conference of Seventh-day Adventists in Mt Salem, St James. The symposium was held under the theme ‘Emotional Intelligence – The Key to Teacher Well-being and Student Success’.

“As educators, your role is significant in nation building. Unfortunately, we are in an era in which we have to be challenging many individuals who believe that education can remain underfunded and that we can continue to have educators as just proxies in talking about improvement but never really tackling the core of the issues that we face,” Smith said. “I tell you this today, that there is no version of a successful Jamaica, there is no version of an economically viable Jamaica that does not have education and educators as the vanguard leading that charge.

“The reality is that you are at the core of the transformation we envision for this country, and it is so important that we stand in that truth and recognise our value to this transformation. We have some lofty dreams espoused in Vision 2030, and those dreams talk about a knowledge-based economy, an economy that is not based on muscle but on the power of the human mind.

“The reality is we have to find a way to ensure that the individuals who make the work happen, who make the magic happen, that they feel highly motivated and appreciated.”

The well-being of Jamaica’s teachers has been a recurring concern in recent years, with the JTA commissioning a study in March this year to determine if there was a connection between educators’ stress levels and their physical and mental health.

Prior to the study being commissioned, the deaths of 12 educators between May 11 and August 28, 2022, were attributed to the stresses of the teaching profession compounded by underlying medical conditions.

Smith also told the meeting that more investment should be put into the physical infrastructure of schools as teachers have to contend with inadequate furniture and other hurdles in their classrooms.

“We need greater investment in our classrooms. I worked for a while at the National Education Inspectorate, and what I saw were teachers doing amazing things with very little, oftentimes in classrooms where, if you are not careful, the ‘chi-chi’ would eat you in the classroom,” said Smith. “We have many teachers sometimes sitting on chairs that are just held together with duct tape and a prayer. I am saying that we need to understand that there needs to be a deeper investment in education beyond the rhetoric, beyond just the platitudes.”

The need for infrastructural repair work for schools came into sharp focus following the passage of Hurricane Beryl on July 3. At that time, the JTA’s immediate past president, Leighton Johnson, called for the Ministry of Education to set up an emergency fund for repairing damage to schools caused by natural disasters.

Before that, in August 2023, school administrators expressed concerns about outstanding repairs and furniture supply ahead of the start of the new school year in September, noting that some schools had issues going as far back as 2007.

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com