The Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers’ Association, stunningly, plans to launch the first of a two-day blackout protest today as the Ministry of Education gears up towards restarting in-person schooling for secondary level students on Monday.
It was, apparently supposed to hit the education system like a thief in the night before it was exposed on social media, alerting the public and forcing TTUTA to disclose the reasons for it.
TTUTA president Antonia Tekah-De Freitas is asking members not to engage with either students or school management on any form of educational activity today. She hopes members will take time to “rest and reflect” today and next Tuesday.
In a communique to members, TTUTA said the decision was taken at a recent emergency meeting which discussed the disrespect being shown by the Education Ministry over the way forward on the school reopening plan. TTUTA noted that the ministry had not taken its main views on board regarding the plan. Specifically, it noted a key concern over infrastructure to support physical and virtual teaching simultaneously and the increased expenses teachers have had to bear for using personal WiFi service to facilitate online teaching since in-person schooling was stopped last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
All of this comes as individual secondary schools themselves are now grappling with how they will actually carry out the Education Ministry’s mandate to facilitate a return to in-person classes next week. From what this media house has been able to glean, the biggest problems have to do with the space for proper social distancing and human resources required to create “safe bubbles” for returning students. And then there is the issue of fully vaccinated students being exposed to teachers and support staff who are not, which has been a major contention for parents/guardians who have complied with inoculating their children. The uncertainty of schools’ ability to safeguard students on their return to in-person schooling has, in fact, made some parents/guardians consider keeping their vaccinated children at home to continue online education.
For sure, there will be many issues to be ironed out regarding the reopening plan. However, one would have thought that one of the first courses of action for TTUTA would have been to convince its membership to get vaccinated when the Health and Education Ministries pushed a mass drive for teachers and support staff, so that schools could become the first safe zones throughout the country.
The education experts have long raised the deleterious effects of online schooling on students’ ability to learn. Yet, because COVID is here to stay, countries have been making the decision to return to physical classes taking all measures possible to protect the educators and the students. Why therefore could TTUTA not have sought a resolution meeting with the ministry before taking such drastic action?
Either way, it is this media house’s hope that both parties will get together soon to resolve the issue. Our children, who carry the country’s future in their schoolbags, cannot stay home indefinitely and we must find a way to resume schooling while fighting the pandemic. As such, we hope that TTUTA will start the goodwill by scrapping today’s Operation Blackout. If not, hopefully, right-thinking teachers will disregard the call.