Please describe a time when your role as a teacher had an impact on your community.
I am Ali John Kuku: aged 27 years. A Sudanese by nationality, registered with UNHCR. I completed my form four in 2014 and was awarded a certificate of completion. I got employment immediately in 2015 in the camp, Kakuma, I was given upper primary classes to teach – standard 5, 6, and 7. I teach English, Science, and Social Studies. I was liked by my learners so much and also people in the community. When I pass by everyone would like to say “hi teacher” and I really liked that and I was valued so much.
The role as teacher had a great impact on me. I really learned a lot from my colleagues, the way of teaching strategies to be used in teaching, how to make lessons interesting and enjoyable and for learners to interact with my lesson. I could be able to work to create a classroom atmosphere in which every student sees everyone in the light. I learned all about their academic strengths and needs, but even more about their interest, fears, hopes and worries. I helped students learn these things about themselves and helped students to learn some of those things about each other.My role as a teacher had a great impact in that I learned that each student is somebody’s precious child. It is known that every parent has high hopes, valid concerns, and great expectations for that child. I worked to help the parents understand the goals and to develop their confidence. I learned that parents are an integral and vital part of the child’s education – not intrusive, annoying impediments. I was able to recognize that and the community recognizes that how much intelligences can be made in a child’s life – and how difficult it can be for a parent to trust their child to anyone else.
My community was able also to: understand that a teacher tries to see things through the students, eyes as well as working hard to be fair, empathetic and encouraging. They also understand that the teacher strives to maintain high expectations for each and every child – to challenge them to reach for their best and aim for the stars, teacher is strong, firm, and determined and slow. Students that are learning and doing one’s best are the goals and the grades are not. In my community they came to understand that education has a good impacts and bad impacts. Good impacts are that they have a good teacher to make learning exciting, helping students find areas of interest to explore and master; Help students see the goals which are at first difficult but may eventually become easy, and are often the most satisfying to achieve. A good teacher helps students, sees new things. All these they learned when I became a teacher. My community had a positive attitude towards education due to the positive impacts.
They said a good teacher becomes attached to the students, knowing it will be hard to say goodbye at the end of the school year, hoping those students will come back to visit. Realizing even if they never see each other again, they will carry memories of the teacher in their futures and with their successes. I never minimalized the role to play in influencing students’ lives. Hopefully that role will be positive, possessing the qualities of a “charismatic adult” who not only touches students; minds but also their spirits – the way they see and feel about themselves for the rest of their lives. Such influence is truly a rare privilege that should be prized and nurtured.
