From the southern end of Africa to the Arabian Peninsula, an educational journey has come full circle.
Clearview Academy is cutting the ribbon on their new top job appointment. With over 40 years in the classrooms of multiple countries with contrasting cultures, Marie Smit is ready to take Clearview Academy into their envisioned future. Currently teaching Grade 3, incoming Principal Smit will prep her office for takeover at the end of April.
Principal Smit first took charge of a classroom in Nelspruit in 1982, teaching English and Afrikaans classes which included boarders from Lourenço Marques. From there, she moved to a farm school near the Botswana border and by 1990 had returned to Johannesburg to teach at a large government school.
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Before that first decade in the classroom, however, Principal Smit was already accustomed to the learner environment of young children. Her mother owned a nursery school and has since been unable to resist the pull of the classroom.
“I always knew that I would be a teacher one day,” admitted Marie, who has evolved from observer to teacher to a formulator of curricula.
Never allowing herself to stagnate, she moved to Sharjah in 2002 where she would work for 13 years. Starting out as a teacher, she would soon become a curriculum coordinator and eventually become a principal before serving for another six years in Abu Dhabi. Throughout her time in the desert oases, she would deal with cosmopolitan classes transcending cultural and linguistic barriers. “We learn so much from each other and our behaviours,” Marie reminisced.
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Having returned to South Africa in July 2021, Marie took a position at Clearview Academy in January 2022. By July of that year, she was deputy principal and will now assume the role of school leader with her predecessor wishing to focus on teaching and her own academic pursuits.
Fully entrenched in the mechanics of Clearview Academy, she will be tasked with realising the vision of the new owners.
“We want to give the learners of this school the best education possible. We want to push the kids so they are able to push their own limits and find new limits beyond those,” she said. Focus will not only be on the learners, having implemented a classroom personal development programme for teachers.
While the school follows the government curriculum, Clearview is able to augment that and will be doing so with an emphasis on phonics and an aggressive online dual-language reading campaign to promote digital proficiency.
“All the systems are in place and the best results will be seen in two or three years.”
Capitalising on the school’s small classes and individual attention, together they will mould exceptional youths.
