I am a passionate teacher. As dean of the faculty of education at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) I don’t teach any more on a daily basis, but being a teacher is integral to my identity — to who I am.
The UJ faculty of education takes first-year students in education on an excursion each year. I try to accompany one of the groups, not only because it gives me the opportunity to get to know the students, but also because I get to teach, albeit in an informal environment.
When I was in high school, I did not want to become a teacher. Teaching was not a glamorous profession and teachers do not earn a lot of money. There were some teachers in my school who were excellent, but some teachers were definitely not good role models.
I decided to study to become a teacher because there were good bursaries available for education students. I argued that I would teach for four years to work the bursary back and then embark on a real profession. But, to my amazement, I enjoyed teaching. I loved the interaction with young people. I loved it when I could get them interested and excited about a poem or a novel, particularly when I could see the glint of interest in the eyes of some boys who thought it was not cool to like poetry. It gave me a thrill when children who struggled with school work made progress and to know that I contributed to their progress.
So the four years flew by and I was free to leave teaching. But I did not want to leave any more. I loved being a teacher. Two quotations encapsulate for me why I loved teaching. Henry Brooks Adams talks about the long-term effect that teachers have on learners’ lives: “A teacher affects eternity; he [she] can never tell where his [her] influence stops.” Barbara Colorose points to the important role that teachers play: “If kids come to us [educators/teachers] from strong, healthy functioning families, it makes our job easier. If they do not come to us from strong, healthy, functioning families, it makes our job more important.”
As dean of education, I have the privilege of working with schools and helping to prepare teachers. I am in awe of school principals and teachers who often work in difficult circumstances.
Many of our children live in poverty and come to school hungry. Many schools report that children are not taught discipline at home, which makes it difficult to establish authority in the classroom. All these affect teaching and learning and make the tasks of teachers difficult and complicated, even for the most competent and dedicated teacher.
In the faculty of education we strive towards preparing our student teachers for the complexity of the teaching profession. We do this through programmes in which theory and practice are interwoven. We offer foundation phase, senior phase and FET programmes and will introduce an intermediate phase programme soon. Our foundation phase programme, offered on the Soweto campus, is unique in the country in that the faculty has a school linked to it — the Funda UJabule school. It is a public school but it is used as a training and research site.
Our students observe and work as classroom assistants in the school from their first year, giving them considerable classroom experience by the time they graduate.
The faculty has also recently introduced a more flexible postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE), which allows students to attend classes during school holidays. We introduced this to accommodate the needs of staff in schools who may have a degree, but not yet a PGCE.
We understand the crucial role that school principals play in creating a conducive environment for teaching and learning. We established a principal network, which provides school leaders with support and development opportunities.
The initiative is a joint effort of UJ and Harvard University. All school principals are welcome to join this network.
Our education system and teachers are often portrayed negatively in the media. And rightly so. We need to call the department of education and teachers who do not serve the profession well to account.
But we also need to do more to acknowledge those teachers and school management teams that deliver despite lack of resources and difficult circumstances. These unsung heroes get very little attention. I salute them.
Professor Sarah (“Saartjie”) Gravett is executive dean: faculty of education, University of JohannesburgÂ