Sometime late last year I had my teacher’s in training practice for a month. I was posted to a primary school somewhere in Rivers State, Nigeria. I got to experience different things and I learnt a lot compared to when I was posted to a secondary school earlier last year.
I was asked to teach primary 5, which was the smallest, yet most difficult class to teach. I was worried at first with the so little knowledge they had about things they were ordinarily supposed to know. What caught my attention the most was a noisily shy boy called Chigozie. Chigozie was an intelligent boy but sadly did not know how to use his intelligence. I took interest in him when his teacher told me that they read his exam questions to him because he could not read .I was upset, even as much as i felt pity for this boy who could not read. He was the only one in the classroom who had all the text books, some of them were even struggling to pay their fees, he had everything but HE COULD NOT READ!!!
One day I gave his class a classwork in mathematics and I was astonished when Chigozie raised his hands. Surprised, I asked him if he had finished doing the classwork. He shook his head vigorously and quietly said, “Ma, I cannot solve the sums.”
I stared closely at him for some seconds and I asked him, “Why can’t you solve them?”
He answered, “Because I cannot read the questions.” My compassion as a teacher rose.
I took him to the white board and we started a two-word pronunciation lesson. At the end of the day he solved the sums correctly, after of course, reading it on his own. After school that day, I stayed back to speak with his mum, she seemed worried with his achievement, but obviously not as worried as I was. She complained about not having money to employ private tutors and I sadly saw how satisfied she was with the bar her son had built.
“When you lower the definition of success to such a level that any person can reach it, you don’t teach people to have big dreams; instead you inspirit mediocrity and nurture people’s inadequacies.”
― Shannon L. Alder
I remembered when I could not tell the time correctly, how my mum had taken it as a duty to ask me the time whenever she was around. How she would scold me until I got it right. I wished Chigozie’s mum was like mine. Most people told me to forget about helping him because I was the only one putting the pressure, his mum was not concerned, but I was determined for Chigozie to write his first exam, alone, without anyone reading for him like he was in kindergarten. One month seemed too small, and I had only a week left but i was determined. Everyday I focused more on him during classes, asked him more questions.
I came in for his exams even after my training ended to make sure he read by himself. Chigozie did not do excellently well in that examination, but he read all his papers by himself. I was proud of him.
Chigozie’s story is a lot like how our life is, sometimes we need to raise the bar for ourselves, push ourselves a little harder, we might not end up where we want to be, but we definitely won’t be where we used to be!! RAISE THE BAR FOR YOURSELF TODAY.