Celebrating unsung heroes: Teachers who shape our future
Remember their names: Derek Swart, Chadwin Bagley, Ethon Alexander, and Bernice van Blerk – all teachers from schools in the province who earned distinctions at the recent National Teaching Awards.
Swart (Paarl) won the coveted Kader Asmal Lifetime Achievement Award, Bagley (Strand) for excellence in Special Needs Education, and Alexander (Knysna) and Van Blerk (Vredenburg) for teaching excellence in Mathematics and Physical Sciences, respectively.
These heroes are joined by provincial winners: Heather van Staden (Sarepta), Dorothy Jooste (Kuils River), Dillon Seals (Eerste River), Ziyaad Noordien (Lentegeur), Christine Bester (Botrivier), Liezel Reynolds (Hopefield), Lalindei Botha (Paarl), Irma Mentoor (Paarl), Gershwin Kroukamp (Atlantis), Tiro Motaung (Khayelitsha), and Llewellyn van der Ross (Blue Downs).
Remember their names, not as the only selfless citizens who give heart and soul to contribute to the social good, but as those we recognise today to inspire all of us for tomorrow.
Among many heroes in the broad societal programme to imagine and construct new futures for South Africans, as teachers, they must be the spearhead of the campaign.
Remember their names, for when provincial budget deficits lead to the loss of 2,400 teaching posts, it will take resilient spirits and dogged determination to forge ahead and keep teaching with gusto.
It is a blind spot in our society that we celebrate our sporting, artistic, and political legends more than our teachers – a blind spot not because society values their impact less, but because the glitz and glamour of great teaching prioritise the classroom as its “site of performance.”
Unlike the big stages demanded by popular culture for its media stars, the sites on which teachers perform are hidden. The crowd in the classroom is small, their superstar moments seen only by a few.
When viewed as a production on stage, teaching is taken as no more than an everyday occurrence, as one among thousands in schools around the country.
Yet therein lies its strength.
In its more humble and hidden state, the classroom offers a “site of significance”. The classroom is the site where the teacher steps into that unique relationship with a learner and her classmates, enabling them to become more human, and more united.
It is the confidence learners gain to be, to think, and to overcome, which blooms over time, that creates the true glitz of teaching – a slow burn that takes time but promises a miracle.
This miracle is not only the next generation gaining the knowledge and skills to live meaningful lives, but, more importantly, the triggering of imagination, moral fortitude, and resilience – the process of humanisation that teaching strives to achieve.
Such performances by teachers offer no immediate victories or crowd-chanting moments that are broadcast to the masses.
At this site of performance, the teacher is often the only witness to the glamorous moments when learners wake up to their agency – to their power of self and of togetherness to define and remake the world.
In this work, teachers surpass superstars in other industries and become true heroes. In the silence between media spectacles of superstar performances, they drive the project to unlock futures for their fellow stars in the classroom.
It is the sites of significance they create that make possible the future sites of performance that will shape the country.
Remember their names.
* Rudi Buys, NetEd Group Chief Academic Officer and Executive Dean, DaVinci Business Institute.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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