After watching the new teenage feature film Juno my mind went retro-drive as I started thinking about all those kids I taught who fell pregnant while at school. It is a long list.
As a life orientation teacher at a big high school in the West Rand, I have seen it all happen in the classroom – violent gangsters, teenage pregnancy, broken dreams, lack of interest in studies and a variety of other issues affecting our learners. But teenage pregnancy remains the most worrisome of learners’ problems and it feels as if the cases have increased dramatically during past eight years.
Like Juno, the protagonist in the same titled flick, most adolescents consider themselves ready to engage in everything adults do. This includes involvement in sexual relationships, smoking and alcohol consumption, largely because they lack attention from their parents. Juno is a girl who grows up motherless in a rather stable family.
After her father remarries, things change. Juno is virtually alone. She misses her mother, and her stepmother and father do not dedicate enough time for her. As a result Juno falls pregnant by a fellow classmate.
In my life as teacher, I can relate to this. And I blame it on both teachers and parents. As teachers we become secondary parents to these kids. It is thus our responsibility to instill discipline while promoting a culture of learning, but we cannot do it alone. Parents need to play a bigger role and, as it is the case in Juno, they are not.
I have realised in my profession that most teachers are quick to give up on their learners. We are quick to dismiss learners as useless delinquents who should first learn to “listen to their parents before they listen to us”. We often talk to our learners about sexuality, their involvement in gangs, drugs and violence and peer pressure because we fear these.
Juno is not a unique case. Her friends display the same behaviour traits and are just as misinformed about life. They are on the same level as she is and are experiencing the same social issues. This says a lot about their parents, but mostly about their teachers – these are the supposed role models.
Juno stands out as the ideal educational resource for our learners’ growing minds. The effectiveness of mass media in drilling down messages to young people has proven successful in recent times. The advent of MP3s, DVDs and the internet are examples of appealing methods one can use to inform young learners, while entertaining them as well.
I would undoubtedly recommend Juno for life-orientation lessons because no matter how much you bark in front of these kids, somehow they mange to get into trouble. More teaching resources are thus better than none at all.
Life orientation lessons in particular require a lot of visual material to entice learners and make them interested in the content, without straying from the context.
These are undoubtedly desperate times for our schools, given the rise in school-based violence and teenage pregnancy. But looking on the bright side, this situation presents an opportunity to prove our worth to these children. This calls for us to get our hands dirty and begin to nurture the future of this country. If parents are failing to do it at home, who will?
Amanda Dibetle is a life orientation teacher at Mosupatsela Secondary School in Kagiso, Mogale City on the West Rand of Gauteng