Home seems boring to me, after graduating from senior secondary school, adding up to the point of staying at home for the meantime because my senior secondary certificate is not out yet. I find it challenging to be alone without anyone to talk to when everyone has gone out for their daily activities, except on weekends when I have my sibling at home to play with.
One cool evening, I decided to share my opinion with my mum about going out in the meantime; depending on the time, I gained university admission. “Mum, please, can I apply to work in a school for a while?”. My mum seems surprised with the question. “Who told you to go and work? I am not feeding you well,” asked my mother. “No one, but because I'm lonely at home.”. She notified me that she would help me to get a job as a teacher. My mum is a civil servant who works in a school, while my dad is an engineer who doesn't always stay at home. Most times, my mum seems to be the one at home for me and my siblings.
I seem to be the first child of my parent; there are five in our family: three children and my parent. “Temitayo,” yes, Mum, guess what. What, Mum! Greenhall School has decided to employ you as one of their assistant teachers. “Wow! I just can't believe this." I was so excited about this when I broke the news about my new job. Furthermore, I love this opportunity as a teacher.
I love kids a lot. At the same time, I was wondering how my mum got the job for me because the school seems big and popular in the neighborhood, not far from home. I didn't know that being an assistant teacher is demanding, and it's beyond assisting a teacher in a class; more duty is attached to it with a low-income payment. At first, I appreciated having the job. I was eager to work.
After passing the interview with the school director, he took the primary 1 class to assist the class. Getting to the class, I observed that there were 32 students in the class. I was introduced to the student and also to the class teacher, who was at first happy to have me around. Mrs. Idowu seemed to give me a welcome smile when I stepped in as her assistant in class. She told me my duties in the class, which require more marking of the student assignments, teaching the students who are slow in learning, and also controlling the students.
Mikhail Nilov
She does give the students two to three homework assignments, and they submit them on my table for marking. Apart from assisting the class teacher in the class, one of my duties is to follow the school bus in the morning to pick them up and in the afternoon, to drop them off at their various homes. Mrs. Idowu seemed nice to me at first sight, but as the week went on, she gradually changed. To me, the marking aspect is significant. I may not finish the marking before she will push five students on my student to stand and write. The student seems to be weakening in class. And I have to take my time to encourage them to write fast and also monitor their work.
Moreover, if I don't finish the marking on time, she will shout at me, treating me like her student. This brought fear to my heart. Anytime she was in the class, I was unable to have a flow of interaction with the pupils. Something happened one day; I was loaded with notes to mark, and at the same time, Mrs.Idowu also sent the weakened pupils to my table, and I had no option but to do it. Not long after, she got a call, which seemed to indicate that she would step out for a few minutes. She instructed me to give the pupils some work to do. I wanted to be loaded with work, but I decided to take every work done little by little. Along the line, pupils were making noise, and I would rather not spank anyone. I then gave two pupils an exercise just to scare others from making noise.
When she came back, she saw that I wasn't done with the marking. She didn't bother to ask what I was doing that slowed my marking but insisted she started nagging, and what she said most got me angry: “If you know you're incapable of assisting me in the class, please let me know so that they can change you,” said Mrs.Idowu, In the presence of the pupils, I felt embarrassed. I went to the restroom and cried out my eyes because I wasn't expecting that from her.
The following day, the parent of a student I gave exercise to came to the school and made a complaint that why would I give a pupil of a tender age an exercise to do, to the extent of coming along to spank me? But I wasn't in school that hour. This brought fear to me; I was just confused; it was like getting a job was unfortunate luck for me. It just looks like “It never rains, but it pours.”. I started making more mistakes in the marking of the student notes; complaints were rolling in every day due to my attitude, neither in marking nor in my behavior towards the pupils.
One of the teachers called me into her office and advised me not to look up to the teacher's attitude; that is how she is; I shouldn't expect praise from her.
One fateful day, after marking the pupil's note, I wanted to stock the pupil's note inside the shelf. While walking towards the shelf, I fainted. I rushed to the sickbay to rest before going home. When I got home, I told my mum that I would resign, and she said, No problem. That was how I resigned from that school.
