When do you feel proud to be a teacher? How does this affect your students, your family, and the people around you?
To begin with, I am called Dario Ujwok Achari, I started teaching in the year 2015 after I successfully completed the Kenyan Certificate of Secondary Education (K.C.S.E) in 2014. I scored a mean grade of C+ with 52 points. Immediately the results were released and I applied for a post of teaching in all of the schools in Kakuma Refugee Camp. I did the interview and passed, I was posted to Unity, now known as Kakuma Refugee Primary School. I was very excited when I received the message that I have passed the interview and expected to report to the school where I was posted. That day I was overwhelmed with joy because I know I have met one of my expectations of being a teacher and shared my God given talent and ability through teaching. I was having hope of helping others and truly it has come. In the school where I was posted the school looked strange to me for the first time, but as time goes on I became adapted and start building friendships with my fellow teachers and learners plus the school subordinate staff. Life changes slowly by slowly, within a fraction of some time I became familiar with learners’ names and classes. For all of term one I did not teach any class because it was only one week to end from examination. I started my professional job as a teacher in form two. I was allocated to teach mathematics class eight (8) and social studies standard five (5). When the second term came to an end, I started having hope that one day my class will do better because most of them passed well in mathematics and they started appreciating me and so did the school administration.
My feeling of pride as a teacher came in 2015 when the K.C.P.E. candidate results were released on the 28th of December. I was named the best mathematics teacher in Kakuma Refugee Camp. My class was having a total mean score of 73 out of possible 100 marks, with that I was so proud that during the education day I was even lacking words to express myself because I was so excited. Getting such a high mean score was not easy; as a teacher you need to use the right teaching strategies and techniques. Since that time, I started feeling proud to be a teacher and not just a teacher but the one who at least lifts someone from zero to hero. All the learners in the school preach my name that Dario is good and even to their parents, that preaching even makes me more proud about the work of my hand. The result of me feeling proud as a teacher makes students trust me and give them the morale to work hard academically. Back at home, all my family members feel proud of me due to what I am doing in the school. My pride as a teacher here changes the thinking of my younger stepbrother toward education - now they believe they can make it too like me. They also start having hope that the school I went to or study was not a joke, because it now makes sense to them that education works.To people around me, the outcome of what I did in my teaching profession impressed them because their children moved to the next level of education and they were very proud of my work. They have hoped that if I stay with them they can do something in education. To conclude I feel more proud when I am teaching and my students respond to what I am teaching in a positive way.