That Common Teacher -By Ekekere SAMUEL

My journey through the education landscape wasn’t planned. If I had the inkling that I’d be a teacher and perhaps run a school, I’d not have studied engineering. Yes, I got a second class upper degree in Mechanical engineering, registered as a member of the Nigerian Society of Engineers and I assumed that it was only a matter of time before I landed my first engineering job.

But life had other things in store. The life path for me in the last few years of my life was to teach, to be a teacher who’d walk the dirty muddy streets of a local village on the outskirts of Uyo, Akwa Ibom state. I didn’t think I would be a teacher. I wanted so badly to do something different. I was raised by a teacher mother and I saw first-hand the challenges she faced.  But the teaching profession chose me.

I respect teachers more now than ever and I’d fight anyone who’d talk down on a teacher. It’s not because it is a profession I’ve been involved with for more than fifteen years. Not at all! It is the fact that the Nigerian society looks down at them with disdain like “that common teacher”.

There’s nothing as disrespectful as spiting the one who showed you the path through life and sacrificed their own dreams so that you can see beyond them. People assume that teachers have no dreams because they choose to ignite their class rooms with directions for others. I beg to differ. They carry the dreams of everyone on their heads and do this unapologetically without expecting a reward. Their reward is to know others accomplished their dreams. Their pride is in knowing they taught that man into his dreams.

I’ve been “that common teacher”, but my sin is to desire the good of the children that time has placed under me. Now I understand what my teachers went through to help me see as much light as I have. And, oh! I love the fact that the light I’m getting out of me is lighting some persons’ path through life.

But that stigma, that thing about being “the common teacher” down the road, society doesn’t understand how it hurts so bad. But it hurts. It hurts that no matter how hard we try, society still turns a blind eye. The man who runs a one shop business down the road is given a pride of place than the man who mends souls. The teacher is counted as hopeless, futureless and helpless because he has offered himself as the sacrifice, bearing all the scars so that others can fly.

Now, people are running away from the teaching profession. Those who trained to become teachers are leaving and society is crying “there are no teachers”. How will there be teachers when the ones who offered to stay are poorly treated? They are the least paid, they have the least benefits. I’ve chosen to stay on not because it’s the most convenient thing to do. And the many who are choosing to stay are just hanging on waiting for their big break.

Love a teacher! Hug a teacher! Teachers aren’t criminals. Teachers aren’t thieves. Teachers have a lot on their heads and they still smile with their wards. Yes, you may think they just have to act professional. But how long will they keep acting professionally before they collapse from the burden of their many fears and doubts.

Pray for that common teacher. I know he is common. I know she is common. You may ride on a car that their salary won’t buy if they have to save it for twenty years, but don’t spite them. They are not failures because they are teachers. They are just on the bad side of a society that does not appreciate them.

Don’t spite a teacher. Don’t mock a teacher. You need them that’s why you have to send your children to them. And you will always need them through life. Teachers are for life and a society that lacks teachers lacks a future. The future of any society can be defined by how well teachers in that society are treated. We are probably where we are as a society because we have failed to give our “common teachers” their flowers.

Ekekere Samuel is a teacher, writer and author of several books. He is the founder of Soaring Life Ministries, a ministry committed to helping people find purpose through life.