“I love teaching and I do not think I can swap it for any profession, however well it pays,” says Mavis Shongwe. After a career in teaching spanning 30 years, she is currently deputy principal at Emmangweni Primary School in Tembisa in Gauteng, where she has been teaching since 1979.
Born in Alice in the former Transkei 54 years ago, Shongwe did her teacher training at Engcobo in Idutywa where she obtained her primary teacher’s certificate. She moved with her family to Johannesburg in 1965.
“I have always regarded teaching as my calling. I am the only one in my family who has chosen to do it. At the time there were very limited choices for black people; it was either you do teaching or nursing. And of course, I chose the former,” says Shongwe.
Shongwe started teaching in 1975 at Khulasizwe Primary School in Tembisa. The following year, the principal asked her and four colleagues to start another school in the area, which they called Enxiweni Primary. She says she felt motivated and honoured by this gesture of confidence and handled the pressure and challenges because she is naturally “a team player” and “enjoys working with people”.
She continued to upgrade her qualifications through Vista, obtaining both her senior teachers diploma and higher-education diploma. Armed with these qualifications, she was appointed to the position of head of department in 1995, and in 2001 become second-in-command at the school.
Shongwe says children are her first love and they always bring out the best in her. So when she noticed children were coming to school distressed, she decided to take action. “I realised that some of our learners came to school hungry, sick and just untidy. I decided to volunteer to provide them with meals in addition to our feeding programme,” she says. She says these children come from very destitute families where their parents are not working while others are HIV/Aids orphans.
“They will share stories of not having food at home and that they only get a meal here at school,” says Shongwe. “The vegetables that we harvest do not only augment meals we provide here at school, but are given to these children to take home.”
Shongwe teaches technology to Grade 7s, but her favourite subjects are maths and history. “With history, learners understand their roots and can therefore have a point of reference as they interact with other nations. Maths equips them with marketable skills that makes it easy for them, not only to get jobs, but also to create some,” says Shongwe.
While Shongwe praises the new curriculum, she also points out the consequences of too much paper work. “The administrative tasks reduces the amount of contact time with learners,” she says. “I am all for outcomes-based education, but it demands a lot of our time.”
She also feels that banning corporal punishment has disempowered teachers. “Today’s kids lack discipline and sometimes just talking to them is not enough. I feel we should still be allowed to use the stick, although under regulated circumstances. What should not be allowed is its excessive use.”
Shongwe is happy her son has followed the same career. “I am not surprised, as his father is also teaching. So, in a sense, it runs in the family,” she says.
To those who want to follow teaching as a career, Shongwe has this advice: “Treat the profession as a calling, for it is not about money, but about molding and nurturing young minds into becoming assets of the country.”