Achievements are easy to come by!

Supervision is simply when a mother asks her daughter to prepare jollof rice for her, she provides all the needed ingredients, tells her how to cook it beat.

The mom comes to the kitchen in about 15-20 mins interval to check if she is doing the right thing, if she is not she makes corrections.
The supervisor is the mom,
The supervised is the daughter

Achievement is accomplishing a particular goal that has been made know earlier, it can also be viewed to be having passed beyond the set out mark.

Supervision involves more of regular check, periodic evaluation of every activity to ensure that it is inline with the set out goal. This check is on all the human resources put to work alone.

Human resources in a school involves the cleaners, the security, teachers, assistant teachers, head of departments, librarian, store keepers, secretary, school secretary, nurse, class teachers, etc

Checking on a teachers should be based on a checklist which should contain a list of the individuals job descriptions or what is expected of him/ her in brief.
This will help us know what to look out for when supervising

Supervision  should be scheduled - may be Wednesdays for assistant Teachers, Tuesdays for Teachers, and some selected days for other school staff.

Supervision must not be static in order for supervision to really be effective

Supervision for teachers and assistant teachers should include classroom environment, writing materials for students, teaching aids, teaching methods, teachers attitude, teachers use of words, the subject matter, use of examples.

Why supervision ?

It ensures that schools conforms to the rules and regulations and other government directives

To make teachers aware of various resources that can enhance their teaching function for the benefit of the students

To raise the standard of education by helping teachers

To improve the students learning conditions

To ensure that everyday efforts are not wasted in the school

Helps the school uphold a good name

Helps the administrator know the real needs of the school

An effective and efficient administrator doesn't just sit in the office literally doing nothing but ensure everyday's activities moves the organization closer to it stated goal.

Management vs Administration

Management and Administration can be confused sometime. As an administrator these will help you know your basic Job description. If you are : Setting organizational objectives based on available resources Formulating plans and policies for the achievement of the set objectives Defining and Forecasting especially for human and material resources in form of budget. Initiate work activities and defining specific tasks to be performed to achieve objectives Setting up controls and standard of measurement to evaluate human activities leading to achievement of the objective Coordinating and integrating peoples effort and material resources to accomplish set objectives Providing necessary structure and procedure to enhance people's action and activities Defining the type of leadership and authority necessary to accomplish the objective Providing solutions to remedial actions to be taken if objective are yet to be met Providing incentives, motivations and encouragement for better performance If you do all the above then your are involved in Management and not administration. You are a part of the management Management set the vision, mission statement. It is broader in nature.

If you are: Implementing plans, policies, programs after formulation Using scarce resources available to achieve the stated goals Coordinating human efforts and material resources to accomplish educational goals Describing the specific duties and responsibilities to be performed by different officers Training staff for effective performance on the job Establishing policies and procedures, rules and regulations guiding organizational behaviour Solving problems and complaints that may inhibit process of achieving the stated objectives Supervising and evaluating activities based on standard measurement Communicating and set objectives and work activities required fir achieving the goals Promoting and rewarding good performance amongst staff.

Then, you are administering, you are an administrator. Administration set out smaller goals to carry out mission statement Management cannot survive without administration. Both are inseparable. Well, If can do administration perfectly well, you can become a part of the management someday.

Between Administrators and Teachers 2

Interactions between Administrators and teachers sometimes are really a big issue as it are sometimes makes teachers to act rudely to the administrator, teachers give repulsive attitude towards teaching, even the learners can tell when the teacher is giving her best and when she is not emotionally balance.

An administrator we are dealing with human beings always. In every administrators' office should be a picture of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Between Administrators and Teachers we noticed;

1. Lack of Openness:
Being unnecessarily making discussion brief, encoding information makes a teachers mind travel and ponder over a lot of things - positive and negative. It leads to distrust in the long-run.
Even if you have to be brief, it should not be all the time, at the end of the day, an open  discussion over the issue should take place.
Yes should be Yes, No should be No. An iota of trust is needed to achieve tangible things in every relationship.

2. Lack of enthusiasm:
When an administrator is not enthusiastic about the task to be done or his job as a whole, it is visible to everyone.
There must "life" in every message passed. The message must be passed in a way that will appeal to the particular teacher.

3. Lack of fundamental Knowledge of the task:
Every administrator should know something about everything and everything about one thing which is administration.
We need to be exposed to an intricate part of every subject taught, human relations, communication, etc. If as an administrator we don't know  the exact result of every action, how do we evaluate the job done, how do we know what was right or wrong?

3.Bad Expression:

We need to know the right choice of words to use, watch out for omission of words, incoherent statements, etc can cause break down in communication. We need to be communication experts in written words, spoken words, using Information Technology, using Experience also

4. Individual differences:  Everyone is different in every way possible- thinking pattern, tone of voice, capabilities, listening and communication skills. We need to understand every teacher well enough to how to communcate with them enough to get them to happily carry out a task.

5. Emotional reactions
Our emotional state of mind per time like love, family issues, fear, happiness, sadness, anger, assumptions, etc can affect the message we pass down to our subordinates  and they just wonder what is happening to us and the message we are supposed to pass is ignored. And we assume they will carry out the task, and we end up been disappointed and more unhappy.

6. Personality and appearance of the administrator:

There is always a space for improvement no matter your personality. We just need to identify what more we need to acquire for our teacher to give in their best. Some of us honestly have dirty looks, unpleasant body odour,broaden our knowledge base, fidgeting, unkempt looks, poor pronunciation, typographical errors, past unpleasant issues between teacher, poor logical arrangement, and a lot of others can distort the process of communication.

7.Distractions:
We and the other party we are communicating with, we do get distracted by noise, uncondusive environment, improper social timing, provocative dressing, inadequate illumination, phone calls, etc can affect us when we are talking- the message and the person too.

Between Adminstrators and Teachers 1

Courtesy and Cordiality at Work........
Courtesy can be said to be a polite gesture between two or more people conversing over a matter.
Cordiality can be said to be warmth, sincerity and friendliness that is shown when conversing with one another.

Over time, it has been discovered that official relationship between Administrators and Teachers sometimes are not so good and one can easily notice them within the school.

As an Administrator, the complex nature of needs and preferences using people, especially those at subordinate level of any organization; calls for courteous communication.

Courtesy balances between cordiality and tact.
Tact can be said to be the ability to deal with embarrassing situations carefully and without doing or saying anything that will annoy or upset other people; careful consideration in dealing with others to avoid giving offense; the ability to say right thing.

For Administrators to be effective the e communication style cannot be ignored, effective communication cannot take place without conscious use of tact, courtesy, cordiality.

Courtesy can be killed during a conversation through:

Sarcasm: A form of humor that is marked by mocking with irony, sometimes conveyed in speech with vocal over-emphasis. Insincerely saying something which is the opposite of one's intended meaning, often to emphasize how unbelievable or unlikely it sounds if taken literally, thereby illustrating the obvious nature of one's intended meaning. This is when the administrator dwells on the flimsy side of interpersonal relationship and he/she makes statements about their teachers carelessly. Administrators that are mutually close to a particular staff should not use that ground to talk anyhow to the staff.

Insults:To offend someone by being rude, insensitive or insolent; to demean or affront someone. Unintentional insults and indirect insults are usually used frequently in replies given by administrators and teachers

Talking down: The use of didactic and instructional tone in letters, memo or words. For example, "In a decent decent and Outstanding school like ours, Mrs Bimbo......" This is  Mrs Bimbo is not decent and outstanding....
The listener is raging right inside if her, some teachers too will give back that insult too and we will start hearing their voices trying to overpower the other.

Presumptuousness: Assumptions, assumptions, assumptions they are every where about everyone. Making a decision based on assumption is what is wrong, very wrong as most assumptions are not true. As an Efficient administrator and Teacher put away all assumptions of your subordinate and superiordinate. We need to really check if the assumptions are true by giving the teacher a trail at a task and supervision must be done fairly. Also, assumptions of the confidence and capabilities of a teacher does not mean supervision should not be carried out.

Over-familiarity: Hmmmm.... This exist a lot in our schools as we helped our  distant cousin, church members, sisters friends, etc get the job, so they don't concur to an official relationship between you and them they just want to do the things they casually do to you again at work which is wrong, we need to let them know again that at work our relationship is strictly official and any form of discrepancies with that there is a consequence to that.
Or else they will mess our jobs and we will end up achieving nothing at the end of the day.

Whining: One who whines about perceived problems; a complainer. So administrators seems to be only good at complaints and never will hear a suggestion from them, they complain in  such a way that it seems there is nothing good about the job done or the teacher himself. When complaints are more than compliments it encourages stubbornness and resolute personality among the teachers and the simple task becomes more tedious to achieve. Some Administrators say "you ought yo know better", it makes the Administrator blind to Situational dictations and group dynamics.

Curtness: This is a state of been Brief or terse, especially to the point of being rude. It means one is Short or concise unnecessarily when discussing with someone, talking arrogantly, withholding some apart of the information which leads to inordinate brevity of the discussion. The teacher feel the administrator shows no concern for possible personal reasons.

Suspicion: Suspicion is a feeling or terse, especially to the point of being rude.
Short or concise doubt, distrust which is usually imaginary. As an administrator always suspecting your surbodinates' motives will surely show in your attitude when one is with the teacher. If What is  being suspected of seem to be true, then it should be addressed in a face-to-face discussion or a meeting that allows for better understanding of both the teacher and the situation.

Accusations: Courtesy is sacrificed at the center of every accusations because the language is often fouled by bitter reaction to perceived misbehavior. This will surely happen in our school.... Using courtesy, tact, discretion, wisdom to handle issues bring out the truth easily; Anger will not, make enough findings before making any decision... So we don't make the wrong decisions.

As an administrator you are not to be predictable, dogmatic. Different situations require different strategies, so do each employee requires different communication and relational skill when dealing with them, and this makes us an excellent, effective, efficient Administrator. Our teachers too will be happy to work with us!

And our school will be great altogether!