Happiness begins in the classroom

'The most important element in education when it comes to happiness is the teacher,' Dr Ali Al Nuaimi, the director general of the Abu Dhabi Education Council said on Tuesday.

ABU DHABI // The UAE’s push to become the world’s happiest nation begins in the classroom, and teachers have a crucial role in making it happen.

To do that successfully teachers must take positive attitudes to work and own their happiness, Dr Ali Al Nuaimi, director general of the Abu Dhabi Education Council, said on Tuesday.

“The most important element in education when it comes to happiness is the teacher,” Dr Al Nuaimi said. “The teacher is the interface, they deal with students, give them skills and knowledge and make their feelings and inclinations negative or positive.

“They make them look for a bright future or the other way around. So the education guides society.

“Now we want to create a happy society. We have to push the teacher to create a happy classroom, a joyful classroom, a positive classroom, with enthusiastic students who feel they belong and can benefit from that space.”

He told the final day of the Khalifa Award for Education International Conference that teachers should take responsibility for their own happiness, and not succumb to the negative way in which the profession is sometimes depicted .

“Don’t expect others to make you happy, be it government, friend or wife,” Dr Al Nuaimi said. “You have to create happiness by yourself, for yourself.

“Unfortunately, we have a negative environment. We inherited a negative environment about the teacher. The teacher expects others to respect them, to appreciate them.

“That’s not correct. You as a teacher, you should impose respect upon others. You should set the line for others how to deal with you and the framework you want others to deal with you based on it. You should be respectful and impose mutual respect.”

Principals should also aim to make that task easier for teachers.

“In order for the teacher to create an environment that is incubating happiness in the classroom, we should adjust the attitude of the headmaster, the principal,” Dr Al Nuaimi said.

“Because if the teacher is bullied by the headmaster or the principal, or discriminated against, we will lose this teacher from the beginning. It will move forward only if the teacher and the principal work together to make the school a better environment.”

Hussain Al Hammadi, Minister of Education, said the media needed to change the way it portrayed teachers.

“The media is not really contributing positively to our education. Anything that happens negatively takes the front page,” Mr Al Hammadi said.

“I’ve never seen a story about a good teacher. I’ve never seen a story about a good principal. I’ve never seen a story about something positive.

“But when something happens, a small thing, you will find it for three or four days in the news. This creates a feeling within the people listening to the media or reading the news that there is a current issue of unhappiness.”

The ministry is developing a professional development programme for journalists to train them to become “real education correspondents”.

“In the UAE we lack the expertise in this,” Mr Al Hammadi said. “The Ministry of Education is happy to work with the media to develop highly qualified education correspondents who are really specialists, they know what’s going on and they write in a scientific, professional way about what’s happening.”

Dr Saeed Al Kaabi, chairman of the Sharjah Education Council, also called for broadcast media to stop their mischaracterisation of teachers. He said teachers were often ridiculed on television as the foolish, lazy or dishevelled characters in Arab programmes.

“We have to change this trend,” said Dr Al Kaabi. “Making our teachers happy is our shared responsibility.”