May our underappreciated teachers get their due

“If kids come to us from strong, healthy, functioning families, it makes our job easier. If they do not come to us from strong, healthy, functioning families, it makes our job more important.”

Those were the word of Barbara Colorose, my high school teacher and one of those educators who had an influence on my life. I thought about her words and my personal situation. I come from a strong, healthy, functioning family even though it wasn’t a nuclear one.

I passed Grade 12 in 2008. I am well into my 11th year since a teacher stood before me in a classroom. However, ever since that first day in Grade 1 at Phopolo Primary School in Masobe, a dusty settlement on the border of Mpumalanga and Limpopo, teachers have gone beyond their call of duty in my life.

I have kept contact with many of them, from primary school to high school. Such is the gratitude I have for them for the role they played in my life.

In September, Colorose invited me to be a guest speaker at the new school she is working at. She, like many other teachers, always encouraged me to follow my dreams. They were, and still are, my catalysts for dreaming big. I was overwhelmed and very much honoured to be in her presence, listen to her speak so proudly and profoundly about the fine young man I have turned out to be.

In a nutshell, she said: it is young people like me who go out and make a better life for themselves and their communities that refuel them (teachers) and motivate them to keep doing this selfless job.

I echo her sentiments. It is their work that encourages us to be better citizens in society.

We are indebted to teachers. They don’t even get paid overtime. They sacrifice time supposed to be spent with their loved ones to offer extra classes. In rural schools where I come from, there are no qualified sport scientists. Some of them turn into soccer, athletics and netball coaches. They take on these extra responsibilities just to ensure pupils can realise dreams that are beyond the classroom.

With parents’ hectic lives, mostly single mothers, my teachers were the people I would confide in. School has always been a safe haven.

For most of my early grades, my family didn’t even know that I was a chatterbox of note. The school environment and the teachers’ encouragement enabled me to express myself more effectively than home allowed. They made me feel extra special.

That they would listen to all the dull, crazy and sometimes seemingly unachievable dreams proved to me that this was way beyond just a job. Teaching is a calling.

Those teachers taught me as if their next breath depended on me grasping their lessons. Our careers, dreams, characters and personalities are shaped by our teachers too.

Saturday was World Teachers Day, when we celebrated the heroes and heroines of the classroom. The truth is, the celebration comes with some pain and heartache. They are still poorly and unfairly remunerated. I hope that our celebration of these awesome selfless servants comes with conversations and policies that will ensure we thank them better (pay them well) for the thankless jobs they do.

Chabalala is the founder and chairperson of the Young Men Movement, an organisation that focuses on the reconstruction of boys’ socialisation to create a new cohort of men.

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