The Unsung Heroes

Wow! Talk about hit the ground running! I’ve only just managed to come up for air this weekend after 2 weeks of work. Typical! You forget how consuming teaching is until you start back.

My first morning was a shambles and would have been even worse if I didn’t have some experience to fall back on! It took me twice as long to get ready to leave the house as I had intended (no surprises there to most!... and yes I did need to allow time for the hair-dryer AND the straightners!) which made me late to school, late to the photocopying queue (one of the many hazards in teaching … leaves road-rage for dead!!) and the timetable for the day that was supposed to be on the whiteboard for my students was non-existent!!

My next hurdle was the nightmare of going first (thanks boss!!) to call names out in the hall in front of around 200 parents and their babes. To put this in perspective let me give you a few of the names I had to tackle – a mixture of first and last names. Put a few of them together and you’ll get the idea!

LEUII
PAOGOFIE
WOUD – looks easy but you’d be surprised what comes out under pressure!
FINAUGA
AKOSITA
ANEFUSI
MUFEED
WASEEM
CHIRAG
MAUSIA

Under pressure, they all sounded… interesting!

Next up, I forgot as well (just to add a little more pressure to my morning) that I had the babies of the school instead of the seniors and the room became a fishbowl with parents making sure their ‘Johnny’ had followed the teacher from the hall to the classroom ok (or hadn’t fallen over unable to get up due to the sheer size of their mini-house sized backpack!). Oh, let me add that they stayed for a ‘little while’ too. Plan B was hatched and came into action pretty quick. We started straight away with some ‘work’ and before you knew it, the last one had gone before the instructions had finished! Then I relaxed, regrouped, got them all back in front of me and started the day all over again with a nice chat!

I managed to talk away a good portion of the block (again, I see shocked faces!) and (seeing as I missed getting to the photocopier before the bell!) managed to catch myself up in the break and carry on with a little more decorum. My catch phrase was still: “Now don’t rush!” (that’s teacher speak for: “don’t work so fast that I have to prepare more filler work to last the first week of school where you have no pens, no paper and all I can do is test and get to know you!” )

Heading into week three (a teacher can tell you the week of the term at the drop of a hat but never the date!), I’m now in full swing! My Pacific Island girls still have me just slightly confused – four have long hair, two have short hair and they sit together in pairs! Akosita prefers Sita and looks just like Vienna, Julia prefers Jul, Anefusi prefers Ane and Elizabeth and Christina still have me confused as they both have long hair, wear it differently every day and they sit together!

There are still those moments when you think there is no hope – the child that has a reading age of 8 at 11years of age, the child who can’t spell ‘forget’ in Form 1 (we got from the ‘f’ to the ‘o’ and then it was random letters of the alphabet…), the child that has yet to learn how to internalise his thoughts (!!!), the child who comes up after 10mins of work and pointing at the front of a booklet where it says ‘Name:___________ ‘ asks if they write their name on the line (oh my goodness – how did they survive Primary School!!), the child who pummels me every minute with a question and the child that can do no wrong (works like a Trojan completing everything first and to the best possible standard).

I never go through a day without laughing… whether it be from hearing someone else’s neatly side-stepped ‘faux pas’ or their discovery of yet another quirky child (teachers are a mean bunch!!) or a good old laugh at my own expense!

I never go through a day without learning something new… Finauga can throw a tennis ball at a target a mile off and hit it, PJ is like a walking dictionary, children hang off my every word with a trust that is unbelievable and I can build their self-esteem or cut to the quick – often faster than I tend to realise.

I never go through a day where I don’t feel the weight of my ‘job’ on my shoulders… shaping the minds of the future is no easy task!

For those who don’t know teachers, we are a rare breed! We’re the quirkiest of the lot! We often have a multitude of skills yet we cannot be all things to all people – despite the demands placed on us. We bounce off each other regularly, off-load most afternoons purely to remain sane, pull our hair out at social injustices at least once a week, share or ‘borrow’ (!!) ideas regularly all for the benefit of ‘our children’.

Unsung heroes? Not to some but I’ve seen my fair share and I know some are, especially where I work at the moment, purely because their day is never over, their work is never done and everything is always for their kids!


PS… the staffroom really is as scary as children think it is!