Diary of ex-teacher

Jamataka Primary School classrooms that are built by corrugated iron PIC: KEOAGILE BONANG
Jamataka Primary School classrooms that are built by corrugated iron PIC: KEOAGILE BONANG

Whenever the issue of the education mess crops up, there’s always one question on everybody’s lips, “what went wrong, where, when and how?” We like to pretend we never saw it coming for then we won’t be forced to “talk to the man in the mirror and ask him to change his ways”.

In the 18 years of my career as a teacher, I have witnessed rot in the education ministry. First at schools. Leaders at schools are rotten to the core! Hard workers who excel are sabotaged. It is the lazy ones who spend time in leaders’ offices snitching and gossiping who get promoted.  The situation has embittered hard workers and made the work environment toxic. In another matter, the practice of leaders recommending subordinates for promotions is wrong on all levels! In most cases, hard workers are astute characters who will not think twice about calling a leader out on their misbehaviours, bullying, oppressive tendencies and hypocrisies. Now, how do you expect somebody that you called out to recommend you for promotion? The result is that government loses star performers as some leave the teaching profession while others die alive at work. In teaching hard work doesn’t pay. To elucidate I’ll share a bit of my harrowing experiences in the 18 years that I taught.

When I started work in 1999 at Matsheng JSS, I got a shock of a lifetime when I found the school library closed. It had been for three years. The explanation I got from teachers of English and Senior Teacher Humanities was, there was no teacher librarian. For the life of me, I couldn’t get my head around how people teach, English especially, without a library. The receptive skill of reading is as foundational to all language teaching, as English is the bedrock of the curriculum. Day two of my career I was in Mogokgo’s office, lecturing him on the value of a library to education. I refused to leave until I was given permission to open it. I toiled with support of my mentor, the now Deputy School Head Tlogatloga JSS, Tlhabologo Nageng, to get the library up and running. She would come from Molepolole on weekends to even train library monitors. She assisted me make a shopping list. (The library vote had monies close to 50G from the three years it had been shut). I had minored in Music and didn’t know anything about running a library, but Thabbz taught me all I needed to know and was literally a phone call away.

Editor's Comment
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