My rough journey as a teacher - Part 2

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Yesterday I told you about the farm school where I taught for seven years.  It was the most eye-opening experience in my life.  It is on this farm that I realized that life is all about humanity and love, and a child can absolutely flourish if he is treated with respect. 

The Bible says that you should treat people the way you want to be treated, and that is a hundred percent true except if the other person is totally against you. Perhaps I did not notice it or I wasn't bothered enough, but the Principal of the farm school absolutely hated me.  

In the beginning it was wonderful.  I helped her with everything and then she started to treat me differently. She accused me of trying to take away her job, and then she tried everything in her power to get me fired.  

Lucky for me I had the backup of all the other teachers, and it was them that really saved me. We were only five teachers at the school including the Principal and the four other teachers backed me a hundred percent.  I was not even aware of all the corruption that went on in the school, and in the end, the Principal was fired.  

She bought a car with school fees paid by the parents and I was there the day that the Department of education came to fetch her from school. I have no idea what happened to her, but up to today if I was to see her, I would just ignore her. 

I stayed on for another year and then a post closer to home became available.  The department of Education contacted me and offered me the job.  I gladly accepted as this would mean that I did not have to drive so far in the mornings.  I ended up at a school where they had Primary and the High school combined as one school.  I was overwhelmed by the hundreds of students and we actually had a staff room where we sat during breaks.  

I was used to multigrades in one class and very few teachers around me, and suddenly I had my own classroom, fully equipped and I could not believe my luck. It was a wonderful time teaching and I made wonderful friends.  I taught my favorite subjects, Mathematics and English and everything was great.  

The only issue at this school was about religion.  The school was mostly Indian kids, and you won't believe how much conflict there were between teachers from different religions.  I only noticed this after a few months when I was settled in.  

You cannot believe how teachers from opposite religions acted towards each other.  They would not even sit in the same staff-room and they did not speak to each other. This was disturbing to me as I have never been exposed to anything like this and to me it didn't matter to which religion anyone belonged as long as they treated others with respect.  This was a real eye-opener to me.  

The religion thing played over to the kids and there were constant fights because of this.  Ultimately I had to divide the class in three.  Christians, Hindu's and Muslim's.  Need I say more. This was one of the biggest obstacles I had to overcome in my teaching career. Plenty of kids came to cry in my class, because their parents forced them into a religion they didn't want to be in.  This must be one of the hardest things to explain as I am a Christian and those poor kids had no other choice but to listen to their parents. 

-to be continued-

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