Purple Tod Consulting

The voice of our novice teachers (4)

• “I don’t feel I can go break up a fight because I’m so scared they might just hit me, just the older children, the younger ones see me as just being their teacher.”
• “A kwaai (cool and/or good) teacher, a normal teacher does not play soccer with them while on playground duty.”
• “To their parents they would say ‘He puts in the effort.’”
• “Some children do recognise that ma’am is working hard trying to help us.”
• “The clever ones would question am I teaching them the right thing and the others are just there, they don’t take note of you.”
• “I think the learners see me as very strict.”
• “I’m new to the school, must still learn. No one really came to tell me ‘This is wrong, you can’t teach like that,’ they respect you and the way you teach. They have trust and faith that you are going to teach accordingly.”
• “Somebody new to the profession, still going to develop so they will give me advice.”
• I’m in it to win it.”
• “I’m eager, I have a lot to learn.”
•  “I think they perceive me as very green, I still have many ideologies. It seems once you’ve been in the profession for a couple of years  you become rather jaded, you lose that lustre you started out with.”
• “A know-it-all, I won’t always ask for help, we learn best by figuring it out on your own. I’ll come for help only once I’ve formulated something in my head already.”
• “I’m not the best of educators because according to where the CAPS (Curriculum Assessment Policy Statements) document is and where I am, I’m behind with my work, that might seem that I’m not an efficient educator.”
• “Some parents see ‘She’s still so young’ so they won’t have that much respect for you. With older teachers they will be fine, my colleague gets more respect because she looks older and she’s teaching the same number of years.”  
• “Normally when they say a good teacher, they are talking about the older teachers.”
• “This is still a baby, a young man, inexperienced but I put in my effort.”
• “Some parents see you as a good teacher, then there’s other narrow-minded and close-minded.”
• “The parents think ‘Do you know what you’re doing? Is my child going to pass because you’re the teacher?
• “Are you doing your job? Is my child safe?”
• “They might be a bit apprehensive as to what knowledge I can give their child seeing that I’m still a child in their eyes.”
• “Inexperienced, you don’t know how to do this and that, you need support and coaching. We have to go to workshops on a Friday, Saturday. They think you don’t have family.”
• “They see me as young and this is going to be a teacher for years to come.”
• “He still has another thirty years to go, if you are thirty years they value you more because you can train another teacher.”
• “They just see me as a persal number.”
• “They think you’re easy to replace, I don’t think government cares.”
• “The government sees me as the future, that I’m going to be the vehicle for change.”