2 posts tagged “teaching. education”
Ryan and I went out for coffee today. We used to go for coffee almost every day last year when we were studying for our teaching certificates. At the time Ryan was hoping to find a teaching post in Grahamstown because his family and friends were here, but in the end he got a job about an hour away by car in Port Alfred. It is also an old English settler town but is even smaller than Grahamstown. The main attraction is the beach and Kowie river, which you can navigate upstream for about 28 kilometres. Apart from outdoor activities though there is not a whole lot to do there. Many working adults live in Port Alfred for the peace and quiet but work in the neighbouring towns. For the kids who are pretty much stuck there all the time it can be a hellishly boring place.
That is why I wasn’t that surprised to hear that Ryan has some real discipline issues to contend with at the local high school where he teaches Maths. His situation is exacerbated by the fact that he is overworked. At the moment he is teaching Natural Science on top of his regular Maths classes, even though it is not his subject area. To add insult to injury he has to teach Natural Science to Grade 8 pupils who are a very different kettle of fish to Grade 10, 11 and 12 pupils which is the band he is qualified to teach. In the beginning he found the situation completely overwhelming and it was not long afterwards that certain parents came down on him like a tonne of bricks. He says that things are running much smoother now, but I am still left to wonder what makes him stick it out. Evidently it is not a job that earns him much respect, either from his pupils or their parents and the pay is hardly seems worth it.
At least in the art school where I teach I am never openly abused. The worst thing my pupils do is to neglect their work and skip lessons but even these are isolated cases and to be honest they don’t particularly bother me… I am there for those who want to learn. I am also not overworked - quite the opposite in fact. Even when I have several classes running concurrently, the kids generally get on with their work on I leave them to their own devices. My input is merely to discuss ideas, show techniques and supervise - hardly strenuous.
I wouldn’t want to teach core a subject like Maths or English, which requires endless explanations, demonstrations and painstaking corrections. I wouldn’t want the pressure from all sides that every kid gets through these subjects either. Particularly if it was in a school like Ryan’s where many of the kids don’t particularly care about even finishing school. I realise there are selfless teachers (perhaps Ryan is one of them) who take it upon themselves to ‘save’ the lost causes no matter how slim the chances or how difficult the process and for these kind of teachers I have infinite admiration, but I am not one of them. Nor do I intend to be. As I mentioned before, the onus I place on myself is simply to teach to the best of my ability - regardless of how many kids actually benefit from it.
I guess this approach is suited to teaching Art and Design because it is not a subject kids are inclined to loath, like Maths. Most kids find making art fun, so they tend to be open to what I have to say in class. My subject area is not the jagged pill that Ryan’s is, that needs to be coaxed down my pupils’ throats with fury and frustration. Thank God for that.
Having a younger sister was lucky for me. Not only was she a willing listener, she believed every word I said - just like I believed every word my teachers said. And just like my teachers I sometimes spoke the biggest load nonsense. It was fun to tell my sister interesting facts with even more interesting embellishments. “The things we see” I once told her “are actually refracted upside down on the retina at the back of the eye, but our brains turn it the right way around for us”. True. “Baboons, also see inverted images, but unlike us their brains are not smart enough to turn the image around. So they see everything upside down”. Not true.
At university I was a tutor for a couple of years in Art History and Visual Communication and it was during this time that I had my 15 minutes of fame. My classes usually went well, word got around and in time there were so many people attending my lessons I felt like the lecturer. I would have given the tutorials for free at the time, just for the sake of it. It was fun.
After I graduated I decided to do some travelling. One of the first jobs that caught my eye was teaching English as a foreign language in far flung places in the world. It paid more than 10 times what I had ever earned before and I figured that it would look better on my resume than bartending in London or working on a kibbutz in Israel (two other options). Little did I know what a quagmire ESL teaching would prove to be or how hard it would be to extricate myself from it… The only way to make it count as CV-worthy experience ultimately was to go into proper teaching, which is precisely what I did.
Now I find myself teaching Art and Design at a lovely school in the Eastern Cape. All in all it is a fine job but it is not quite as enjoyable as I had expected it to be. The kids are neither as talented nor as interested in art as I had imagined them to be, which is draining. I have less time to make my own art than I thought I would have. Teachers in general and Art teachers specifically are not accorded much respect in South Africa and everyone knows that we earn an appallingly low wage. So the question posed to me today is certainly warranted: why teach?
I tried to answer the question honestly. I am teacher because it is a job that allows me to be my own boss, to set my own rules and be in control of my work environment. Art is important to me, which makes sharing my knowledge and skills in it feel important too. Teaching is one of the few jobs that comes with three months of paid vacation, it is a job that keeps me fit because I am always on my feet, and perhaps most significantly, I am rather good at being a teacher, which is gratifying.
My students nodded their understanding but after the class I caught the tail end of one of them saying how unimaginable it would be to finally be done with schooling only top return as a teacher. What a waste of freedom that seems to them.
I wonder if they are right.
Last year I considered working as a sales representative in Taiwan at the same company my wife works at but I rejected a job offer there because it seemed far too boring. Teaching art on the other hand has not been all that exciting either. What made it seem worthwhile was the belief that my students find my classes enjoyable and worthwhile – that I am making a positive impact on their lives. Today I realised that even my best classes are not enough to keep my students wishing they could be somewhere else, and that has affected me rather adversely. It really made teaching seem thankless on every level.
I suddenly find myself willing to reconsider a new line of work, amongst people my own age in the ‘outside world’ dealing with just about the only thing that matters to everyone – money.
