Tribute to my teachers: Your dedication and guidance gave me the wings by which I fly

A teacher and her Standard Four pupils during a mathematics lesson at Nyeri Primary School on October 5, 2015. Kakamega County has the most secondary schools, according to recently released data. PHOTO | JOSEPH KANYI

What you need to know:

  • Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques, a great sage once said.
  • The teacher is the heart of the educational system, and as the world celebrates the contributions of teachers to the society this week, our correspondent pays tribute to those that shaped his life.
  • One of my favourite teachers of all time was a man called Mr Makeri. He was my neighbour and understood my family circumstances all too well. Often, he would call me for a chat and encourage me never to give up. He still remains the perfect poster of patience, understanding and empathy.

I first developed fondness towards a teacher when I was in Standard Eight. The year was 1987 and the object of my adulation was a Kiswahili teacher who had been newly posted to Heshima Primary School in Nakuru.

I cannot remember much of her, other than the fact that she wore large, horn-rimmed glasses. However, even though the years have eroded much of what I can remember of my teacher, they have not touched my memories of her heavenly smile and motherly gait.

Where, until that point, I had liked Kiswahili, I started loving it, scoring a straight A in KCPE later in the year and another in KCSE four years later, just to prove that yes, I could.

However, Ms Ndirangu, as we all called her, was not the first teacher to have a profound and far-reaching effect on my young life. That honour goes to “Mwarimo Sophia”, who taught me in a nursery school without a name in Wanyororo, not too far from the Lanet military barracks.

It was in that school, which we simply called “Kinathare” — a corruption of the phrase “big nursery school” — that I was first introduced to the joy of story-telling, music and games. We had neither books nor pencils, and so all we did all day long was tell tales, sing songs in vernacular and run out to play in the grass. School, then, was a slice of heaven.

Sophia was my grandfather’s youngest sister and she loved singing and story-telling. Growing up, therefore, that was my idea of nursery school. Today, my son reads a story book every night, sometimes in the morning too, and he is still in pre-school. In my day that would have been considered a small miracle. Thankfully, he has a warm relationship with his teachers, meaning that although the learning curve has become steep over the years, the fundamentals have remained the same.

A teacher teaches English to standard Three pupils at Kawangware Primary school on October 5, 2015. PHOTO | GERALD ANDERSON

ODD CHOICES

My teachers, more than my parents, moulded me into the person that I am today. As a Standard One pupil at Uhuru Primary School — which was quite a distance from my home in Bangladesh estate — my class teacher regularly paid the one shilling fare for me to board a matatu on many a morning. When it was time for me to transfer after I had an accident in school, many of the teachers shed tears on my last day.

Interestingly, the roles were reversed in 1994 when, as a BoG teacher, I wrote a poem for my Form One students on my last day at Michinda Secondary School in Elburgon. Many whimpered and the weak souls buried their heads in their desks to cry. There were many red eyes that morning, though no one had swallowed pepper.

One of my favourite teachers of all time was a man called Mr Makeri. He was my neighbour and understood my family circumstances all too well. Often, he would call me for a chat and encourage me never to give up. He still remains the perfect poster of patience, understanding and empathy. Many times, to this day, I still see his face hovering over mine, telling me not to be discouraged.

Many years later, as a student at Nakuru Day Secondary School, I was mentored by Mrs Leah Kabiru, my English teacher and drama club patron, now deceased. Although I was a good student and an actor of average ability, she encouraged me to be ever more creative, pushing me gently to exert myself more in my studies and my activities in the drama club.

As a Form Three student, when I chose to study typewriting, my then headmaster, Mr Karanja, called me to his office and gently asked me why I had made such an odd choice. I explained to him that my ambition was to become a writer or journalist and he allowed me in the class dominated by girls with secretarial ambitions and two boys who had no aptitude for any other subjects.

Dosi, as we called him, was a gentle giant. He is no longer with us, but he inspired me with his placid display of power and gentle understanding.

A teacher teaches Kiswahili lesson to pupils at King’ong’o primary school in Nyeri on October 5, 2015. PHOTO | JOSEPH KANYI

When he died, a former student said of him in an online tribute: “He lived a good life and shaped so many lives”.

True, I had my fair share of run-ins with teachers, and my most memorable was with Mr Karware, who taught me maths in Standard Five using a book called Highway Mathematics. Once, our English teacher asked us to write about our teacher and I chose to write about Mr Karware, who was also my class teacher. I opted to write the truth as I knew it then. Today, what I wrote would be considered “alternative press” if not libel.

However, the teacher I feared most and would not wish even on my enemies’ children to this day was Mr Githaiga, who served as my headmaster at some point. He is the only man — dead or alive — who has ever whipped me in my natural suit. He taught us English, nay, terrorised us, using a book called Pivot English, which I am glad to report, has long gone out of print.

This is a tribute to all these teachers, and many more others, who made me the man I am today. I owe you one.

 

Quotes on teachers

Teacher writing math problems on the board picture. PHOTO | FILE

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

William Arthur Ward

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There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can’t move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.

Robert Frost

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What is a teacher? I’ll tell you: it isn’t someone who teaches something, but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows.

Paul Coelho

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When you study great teachers… you will learn much more from their caring and hard work than from their style.

William Glasser

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Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well.

Aristotle

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One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings.

The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.

Carl Jung

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The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called ‘truth’.

Dan Rather

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I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

John Steinbeck

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Every child should have a caring adult in their lives. And that’s not always a biological parent or family member. It may be a friend or neighbour. Often times it is a teacher.

Joe Manchin

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Most of us end up with no more than five or six people who remember us. Teachers have thousands of people who remember them for the rest of their lives.

Andy Rooney

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19:5 

The average national pupil:teacher ratio (PTR) at primary school level, according to the Basic Education Statistical Booklet. Public schools have a ratio that is 5.7 points higher than private institutions, and out of all the teachers in public primary schools, 33 per cent are employed by boards of management.

The Basic Education Statistical Booklet indicates that there is no teacher shortage in early childhood development, primary and secondary levels. The pupil-teacher ratio in Turkana County is 101:3, one of the highest in the country.

At secondary school level, the highest student-teacher ratio is 41.9 (in Migori County), while the lowest of 17.5 (Samburu County).

118,608

Number of secondary school teachers in the country, according to the Basic Education Statistical Booklet. Of this total, 90.8 per cent are in public schools wile 9.2 per cent in private ones.

Of the three levels of education — early childhood, primary and secondary — secondary schools recorded the highest annual growth of 8.2 per cent last year, followed by primary schools at 5.1 per cent and then ECD at 1 per cent.

Generally the demand for education has increased over the years. The relative demand is highest at secondary level education and is attributed to the ripple effects from free primary and day secondary education programmes.

(By Maryanne Gicobi)

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Iraqi teachers and civil servants protest on October 7, 2015 in Sulaimaniyah, in Iraq's Kurdistan region, as they have not been paid for three months. PHOTO | AFP

‘Undervalued’ and ‘disempowered’ around the world

The new global education goal, Sustainable Development Goal 4, which is at the heart of the Education 2030 Agenda, has called for inclusive and equitable quality education and the promotion of lifelong learning opportunities for all.

The Unesco Institute for Statistics estimates that countries will need to recruit 12.5 million primary teachers to achieve the goal of universal primary education by 2020. Over four million new lower secondary teacher positions also need to be created to achieve universal lower secondary education by 2020.

In a joint message on the occasion of the World Teachers’ Day signed by Unesco, the International Labour Organisation, Unicef, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and Education International (EI), the organisations said the society must invest in recruiting, supporting and empowering teachers. They regretted that around the world today, too many teachers are undervalued and disempowered.

“Governments should redouble efforts to engage in dialogue with teachers and their organisations and  intensify efforts to provide sufficiently qualified, well deployed, motivated and supported teachers to every school, every community, and every child,” the organisations said in their goodwill message.

Kenya currently has a shortage of about 80,000 teachers and schools have been forced to hire tutors to address the shortage.

This year, the government has recruited 5,000 new teachers at a cost of Sh2.2 billion.