By Dr. Mushtaq Rather
It was a fanfare farewell to a campus coach who as a leader lit up learning amid darkness. That’s how Muneera Mushtaq Shah was remembered while given sentimental sendoff. For those wondering about this lowkey educator, a dive into her decadal services becomes worth considering.
The effable tutor’s leadership abilities have shaped the fate of innumerable schools in Anantnag. She motivated and inspired huge chunk of her colleagues to leave an everlasting impression in the lives of their students. Muneera worked tirelessly to ensure the execution of academic policies at the grossroot level and took every challenge as an opportunity and designed multipronged strategies to mitigate those challenges.
The successful evolution of an educational institution is hugely influenced by the proactive role executed by the head of the institution. All the important policy documents like NEP 2020, National Curricular Frame work for School Education 2023 (NCF 2023) lay strong emphasis on leadership role.
The central competency cited in NEP 2020 is the collaborative approach – the defining skill to be imbibed both by the educators and the modern era learners. Individualized efforts would not suffice and the role of the heads of institution is actually that of a nerve centre to manage the human resource at their disposal.
Muneera Shah had this inbuilt quality to take every staff member on board. This transformed her as an undisputed successful team leader.
She has literally been the engine of change. Her innovative leadership qualities has ensured the steady rise in enrolment. In one of her place of postings as a team leader, the enrolment of the kindergarten section swelled to more than 90 students and was thus successful in winning the trust and faith of the parents and community.
Muneera infused a degree of accountability in her institution: be it the punctuality of the teacher, ensuring the framing and execution of lesson plans by the teachers, monitoring classroom activities, cordial rapport even with the students, and active engagement with parents, especially mothers through regular parent-teacher meet.
One of the root causes and serious issues plaguing the government-run schools is the lack of public ownership. People hardly bother to work towards the betterment of these institutions and are escaping from shouldering their responsibilities to transform them. There is a serious disconnect between the school and the society. Both school administration and society are to be equally blamed.
The school administration need to honour and accommodate the genuine reservations of School Management Development Committee Members in decision-making process. The society too need to reciprocate by taking the ownership responsibilities of these schools. What rendered Muneera Mushtaq Shah as an inspirational team leader was her well-knit social-connect strategy.
She extended due regard to people from different shades of life and grossly engaged them in core decision-making process vis-a-vis development of the educational institution. This certainly raised the bar of the educational institution in the public domain.
Irrespective of impediments and challenges, Muneera’s unique working style needs to be imbibed and replicated by the rest of the heads of institutions to transform their respective institutions as thriving learning centres. The department of education should make it mandatory for the heads of the institutions to undergo leadership building programs to orient themselves with latest trends in the field of leadership administration. This will go a long way in enabling the execution of academic policies at grossroot level in real spirit.
- – The author is a Mattan, Anantnag based educator.
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