It is a beautiful morning, though the wind of uncertainty still blows around the whereabouts of the innocent girls abducted from their school since April 14, 2014. It will be exactly one month tomorrow. I have pitched my tent with hope since the ugly news broke. Hope, in my dictionary simply means constant expectation of good even when your inner chamber is located in the bottom of the darkest tunnel. Hope may not have answers but he has unbroken expectation. It is my earnest expectation that these children will be found and reunited with their parents and loved ones.

As I write this, I remember how hope prevailed after five days when 15 pupils of Abayi International School, Aba were kidnapped in 2010, while being conveyed in their school bus to school. They were all rescued alive and reunited to their parents. Such miracle has a way of keeping hope alive at this time.

Now to the questions to ask before you send your child to the children’s department of your religious place of worship, permit me to discuss question 9: how do they teach?

This question addresses the mission of teaching. Teaching is impossible without addressing the critical issue of how knowledge is disseminated. I think I am more interested in attitude here than I am interested in methodology. The blood of method is attitude. Teaching children life and soft skill effectively demands that the teacher must be an express example of what he/she teaches. Once the teacher lives what he teaches, he/she becomes a role model to the children and presents the children with hope of possibility. Truth produces after its kind so is lying. It is the deep that will call to the deep and no one can do anything against the truth but for the truth. Example is the number one driver of motivation and inspiration. Example says, I have been there therefore, I know where we are going; I know the glory and pitfalls; I know how to savour the sweet fragrance of the glory and how to deal with the pitfalls; I surely know how to take you there; I have a strategy, which has produced; I have the legacy of consistent plying of the road with outstanding results. Example is patient, knowing that knowledge and skills are never imparted under duress and values are not easily inculcated. The teacher, where his/her patience is a product of example finds the emotional stability to bear with the challenges of children in receiving, assimilating, practicing and being grounded in the principles, which the teacher seeks to impart.

The teacher’s example births sense of mission, which is an unalloyed commitment to do all and endure inconveniences to achieve the vision which the children department of the religious place of worship seeks to achieve with the principle being taught. This sense of mission comes out of the fact that the teacher understands the benefits of what is being taught to the children, having being a practitioner of same. Sense of mission gives birth to concern for the children and concern opens the doors to unlimited creativity and innovation. I guess that is why Plato said, ‘necessity is the mother of invention.’ Concern is the author of necessity and necessity is the author of invention. It is concern, which makes a teacher to say, ‘necessity is laid upon me to be a role model to these children under my care.’ Concern creates the Game Changer Mentality, which insists on being a champion of meaningful and enduring change in the lives of the children the teacher comes across.

The question of how the children are taught in the children’s department of your religious place of worship is a question of the attitude of teachers to the children and their protection. The question of attitude is a question of personal values, which must confirm to the corporate values of the religious place of worship. It is a question you must ask and ensure you get satisfactory answers.

I am signing out here. Tomorrow is another exciting and better day to do the battle of advocacy and I will surely join you here as God gives me the grace to. Thank you for visiting. I charge you to Think the CHILD…Think TODAY…Think the FUTURE…