Involve teachers in decisions

The head teacher greeted us with a broad smile — as if she knew us for years — though I was meeting her for the first time. It was a school with 90 students across five grades. The same old story of very inadequate infrastructure, but nicely decorated by the teachers and students. The head teacher’s room was an apology of an office and yet appeared very cheerful. It was merely an 80-square-foot room stuffed with a table, four chairs and a bench on which three teachers had somehow fitted themselves. The rest of the place was occupied by students’ records and other papers. What made the room most cheerful was that the children were happily dropping in with all kinds of silly issues without any fear and the head teacher was pleasantly responding to each one of them, many times, interrupting the conversation she was having with us.