Life as a postgraduate teacher in Nigeria
I often say that the most fulfilling part of my career has been teaching working professionals. Not because I have earned more money from teaching, but because I have been fortunate to mentor a lot more people as a teacher than I have on my jobs. Yet, it hasn’t been a walk in the park.
As I wrote this, I thought it seemed more appropriate for a 10th-anniversary article. But I am uncertain if I will make it to 10 years because as I reflected on the World Teachers’ Day theme which celebrates “Teachers: Leading in crisis, reimagining the future,” I have thought about my journey and I am evaluating if I can continue in this “reimagined future” of virtual learning.
This year I had the most uninspiring students in my eight years of teaching marketing and public relations professionals. Having to host webinars as opposed to face-to-face classes also did not help much. Poor internet connectivity caused a lot of interruptions. We could not review videos and other materials which typically, make the physical classes more engaging and interactive. Nonetheless, the bigger problem was the quality of the students.
Through the years, I have I have encountered diverse students — the good, the bad and the ugly — whom I describe below.
Mothers are sometimes the best students — Some of my best students have been nursing mothers or mothers with toddlers. It’s been the honour of my life to have such students confide in me about their struggles and to have been able to guide them to succeed, even become A students.
Ignorance is truly bliss — In my experience, students who do not have a marketing or communication background sometimes turn out to be the most successful. The reason is simple. They accept that they do not know and come with an open mind to learn.
Pride goes before a fall — In contrast with the previous group, some of my students with agency backgrounds have been the least impressive. Some agency people say to you that they’ve been writing plans for donkey years. Others say some models or theories are outdated. But by the time you ask them to submit plans with SMART objectives and evaluation criteria, they struggle. Or ask them to apply the Extended SWOT model, they are humbled. That’s why you’ve probably heard that the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) qualification humbles people. It is especially true for those who come to a class with a chip on their shoulder. It is because of this reality that my friend and co-tutor asks students to ‘unlearn what you knew before they came into his class,’ when setting the ground rules for a new intake. I have since borrowed that line.
Some people are just mediocre — No matter how hard you try, some people cannot achieve more than a marginal pass. I am not referring to those one-off situations when everyone finds the paper difficult. We’ve all been there. Nor the times that we strive to pass one paper— albeit a borderline pass — what Nigerians refer to as “Let my people go.” Rather, to students who consistently show that they do not care about the little extras such as presentation that separate outstanding students from ordinary students. Tell them to format their work, use sub-headings, add a cover page but, they deem it too much trouble. Some of those students drop-out if you push them too hard. When such students fail, you cannot beat yourself up as a teacher.
Nigerian part-time students are busy; their teachers are layabouts — The Nigerian postgraduate student can be full of antics and excuses. The CIM allows tutors to review students’ drafts once. It’s similar to having a project supervisor. In the first class, tutors announce the timelines for the assignment review. It’s usually about a month from the final submission to the institutes yet, most of the students miss them. Some turn in their drafts a week or 48 hours to submission and expect feedback immediately.
I learnt that Nigerians disrespect tutors’ time a decade ago when my friend, an MBA student in the UK at the time, shared his experience of submitting his first assignment. It was an eye-opener.
My friend was required to submit a soft copy and hard copy by noon of a specified date. So after emailing the soft copy, he headed for school to submit the hard copy. He thought he would walk into an office and hand it over to an individual. He was shocked to find the door locked with a notice advising students to slide their assignments through a window — similar to posting a letter. He submitted his work a few minutes shy of noon. As he was chatting with classmates, another classmate arrived to submit his assignment. But it was past noon, and the window was closed. It was at that point that he realised that there was no concession. He didn’t see his lecturer and so had nobody to beg. And he couldn’t give explanations such as ‘Sorry, I had to submit a report at work, so I missed the deadline.’ If you miss the deadline, you fail. It was a wake-up call which made him sit-up. We both agreed that that’s why systems abroad work. Discipline! More so, a lesson to respect other people’s time. Your time as a business executive isn’t more valuable than that of your teacher or lecturer.
Granted, most of my students are managers and senior managers within their organisations so someone might argue that their lives are a lot busier than those in my story. Perhaps. Yet, my opinion is that my students take deadlines for granted because they believe they have a choice — I can beg the lecturer.
After all said, I would be unfair if I did not mention that the Nigerian education system needs a total overhaul. The right culture has to be built from the ground up. There is also a significant difference between how we learn in Nigeria and the expectation in the west.
The CIM and CIPR (Chartered Institute of Public Relations) qualifications are hands-on. The emphasis is on the application of theory and contextualisation of answers. For instance, the CIPR examiner is not interested in the definition of public relations but, wants the student to submit a proposal for a PR campaign. In response, the student has to assume a real-life role such as the Public Relations Manager writing to the chief executive of a multinational. This approach is alien to Nigerian students. The examiner also does not only expect the student to cite the Stakeholder Theory but to discuss its application in persuasion. Nigerian students tend to fumble here too because as undergraduates, they only learnt to cram the theory and not how to apply it.
