Teachers, Before You Flog That Child….Listen 

Teachers, Before You Flog That Child….Listen 

I’m a Batch A Stream 1 Corps member (Yea. Counting down weeks to my POP). I currently teach in a private school in rivers state. Nuff about all the intro. To the point now, shall we?

I experienced something today and I just thought i should share to all teachers(both corps members and full time teachers), intending teachers and intending corps members.

I had an SS1 economics class by 12pm and when I got to the class, few seconds in, the students didn’t greet. I was expecting someone to save them and echo the routine class greeting so I wouldn’t have to punish them (our proprietress have been sounding warning to us as of late to punish the students if we encounter any act of indiscipline from them. Not greeting a teacher qualified as an act of indiscipline). Someone finally called out for the class to greet. They all stood up to greet. Except one girl. I was a bit furious and i asked her why she didn’t stand up and greet, she still bent her head on the desk without a reply and as expected, the ‘Teacher dictator’ in me(every teacher has it) wanted to call her out and give her some strokes of cane. I asked a student if the ‘disobedient’ girl was sick and the reply was ‘No’. Now, i really got more pissed off and wanted to punish her but all of a sudden, i just ignored it, brushed it aside and went on with my teaching.

A few hours later, I was walking past the SS1 class and I saw a girl crying (a different girl),when I asked what happened, they told me one of their classmates mum that was pregnant lost her baby that’s why she was crying. I came to know later that the other ‘disobedient’ girl of my economics class was crying at that time when I entered the class for the same reason that was why she didn’t stand up to greet. On my own part, i had to praise myself for making the right decision not to punish her cos i know i wouldn’t have been happy with myself if I had punished her and later found out that this was the reason why she didn’t stand up to greet.

So my dear teachers, before you flog that student for coming late without listening to her reasons, do you know if she witnessed an altercation between her parents and she was the child trying to settle them? Before you flog him for failing, do you know if his guardian punished him by not feeding him all through yesterday just because he mistakenly broke a plate while washing? Meanwhile he had an exam to write the following day. Before you flog that child, do you know what’s going on in the life of that child? Before you raise that cane above your head, ask yourself, ‘Have i listened to this child?’