Ten years ago I was living and working in a remote town, called Nyamongo, in Tanzania, East Africa. My career path at that time was in gold exploration. I was managing the gold mining operations for a small Australian company, Afrika Mashariki Gold Mines, with roughly twenty Australian and fifty local staff. When the Exploration Manager returned to live in Australia, I was left to manage with very little assistance. I coped. I worked from five in the morning till eleven at night. Sometimes I would forget to eat. But I kept the camps running, I attended to the needs of the staff, I played the game of politics (for awhile) and after six months I wore myself out. When I returned to Australia due to poor health, I didn't know where my life was going. Why hadn't I succeeded? I was organised. I had worked hard. I thought I was capable of doing the job, so why did my path end there and then?
The most memorable part of my time in Africa was the people. I had learned enough Swahili to understand someone coming into my office to ask for something, which pleased my friend Baru who acted as my interpreter, and I could give basic instructions to the local staff. I had earned the respect of many elder statesmen in the town and had many young followers joining me every afternoon on my jog around the village. I had experienced the lows of asking a local family for their consent to take their son off life support in a Nairobi hospital, to the highs of supervising the building of two teacher houses as well as arranging and funding the successful treatment of cancer for one of our office staff members. There was even the crazy all night experience of taking water samples every hour from the swollen Mara River whilst my local assistant, Peter, shone the torch across the top of the water looking for the eyes of potential man-eating crocodiles and our protection (a couple of national armed guards) snoozed in the front seats of our car, cuddling their automatic rifles.
One experience would stay with me through the dark times of living back in the 'lucky country' with nobody to assist, nobody to care for and no path to follow. It happened one day when I visited a local medical clinic with one of our local staff members so he could renew his prescription of pills to cure his tuberculosis. Yes, the very disease that killed my Father. Anyway, I waited outside the clinic and passed the time by sitting on a branch scratching pictures in the red dirt with a twig. A couple of young kids, probably under 5 years old, were watching me nearby. Although I was a 'mzungu' they didn't seem afraid. So, I kept scratching in the dirt and occasionally made eye contact with them. Eventually we were smiling at eachother. Their curosity got the better of them and they came over to see what I was doing. I guess they asked me what I was drawing, because we ended up drawing pictures for eachother and using the English and Swahili words for them. It was so fun! I was learning and so were they ... This experience would eventually influence my decision to follow a new path. Teaching.
So, here I am, ten years into my journey along a chosen pathway to becoming a teacher and I have not officially arrived at my destination yet. What happened? The path seemed clear, the stars had aligned and I knew in my heart this was my future ...
Well, it isn't like I haven't been busy! In fact, raising, educating and learning from my twin daughters has almost been a full-time job. We've experimented with arts and crafts, reading, mathematics, science, French, gymnastics, soccer, dancing, martial arts and the appreciation of a variety of music. During this time I have also found time to study, work successfully to prove to myself that I could explore for iron-ore as well as help out in the girls's school classrooms and keep our family emotionally connected.
For the last two years I have been privileged to work with primary school children as an Education Assistant. I started out working one day a week in a Pre-Primary classroom and volunteering another day in a Kindergarten classroom. I learned so much from the teachers and students about the early childhood curriculum, the emotional needs of children, how to motivate children, the value of patience, positivity, humour and caring as well as the organisation, safety and management of the classroom and playground. This past year, however, I have moved more into a teaching role as well as maintaining my assistant work with students from Year 1 to 7. Thus, I have developed the knack of relating to students of all ages, motivating and supporting these students as well as assisting them academically. The most rewarding part of my job has been to implement a reading tutoring program to significantly improve the literacy skills of struggling students. In the trial program, I tutored six students and, on average, their reading comprehension improved by one and a half years. These results combined with their improved confidence, self-belief and positivity inspired me to ask the Principal to continue the program. The next eighteen weeks of the program ended literally hours ago. Twelve more students were tutored and the results have blown me away! So, the experience of being part of changing the lives of twenty students through improving their reading as well as their confidence, self-belief, anger management and attitude to meeting new challenges has put the fire back in my belly; now I can't control my passion and enthusiasm for teaching.
Tonight, as I sit here writing, I realise that although my path has sometimes been obscured by undergrowth or overgrown by vines, I am still following my dream to teach. And my job may have concluded today, but another is waiting for me ...
