School: Nonzwakazi Primary School
Based: Somerset East, Eastern Cape
I am proud to be a teacher in this day and time, I marvel at the development of each child that walks into my classroom, I am humbled by their stories and the socio-economic challenges they endure. My key strength is that I am a strategic developer – I get great joy looking at my learners’ books and seeing how they have grown and the concepts they have learnt in a short space of time.
I teach because I aspire to be the teacher I never had; I am passionate about teaching the so-called “slow learners”. I aspire to be the teacher who encourages learners to be the best they can be. I became a teacher because I was subject to name calling at school because of a teacher and, for many years, I allowed that to define me until the child in me believed there was more, and the adult I grew up to be wanted to be the teacher I never had.
Upon realising how the name calling had affected my self-esteem, I became a teacher because I wanted children to leave my presence empowered and with a different outlook on life. My responsibility is not just to build them academically but to help them be better human beings.
My areas of interest are providing quality education to learners regardless of their socio-economic background, I want to develop children holistically, and I believe all learners can learn no matter how their ability to learn differs.
I am a firm believer of the theory of multiple intelligence and use it in all my lessons. My ultimate dream is for the education system to evolve, to bring about solutions to the problems facing our country, to accommodate the diversity of our learners, for our children to be free to learn in an environment where they are not subject to corporal punishment and verbal abuse from their teachers. My superpower is that I bring the world to my learners and sit on the floor with them to listen to who they really are. I stimulate my learners to dream bigger than their circumstances, I broaden their prior knowledge by bringing media into the classroom, taking them on trips where they get to see things outside of their community. We also sing and dance outside the classroom to develop our gross and fine motor skills.
