I am always excited by Jonica's prompts. She knows how to dig deep and make her prompts relational to every aspect of life. One of the major reasons why I always love participating in it. I wish you strength, always, mama.
Anyone can participate and there is no time limit to it. To participate:
Tell all of us all about the fruits of your labour!
The rules to the prompt are simple.
Write anything about The Fruits of Labor
Write 100% original content
Write at least 600 words so Rusty will come to reward you
Submit your story to PromptlyJonica here.
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Have fun!
I think I must have mentioned before that I taught briefly in 2009 and ended it in 2010. My first experience with teaching was after graduation and there is this thing we do here in Nigeria called National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). It's a mandatory one year service to the nation where you will be posted to another state to learn the culture and ways of living. It's a way of making everyone bond and blend to foster the 'One Nigeria' and 'Unity' tags.
The idea has been thwarted now because when most people are posted to another state, they 'work' it back into another state of their preference. I was lucky to be posted to a place that wasn't far off but civilization was far from the place when I 'served'. That was when and where I had my first encounter with teaching. Teaching was a challenge there and I must say that I didn't enjoy any reward of the fruit of my labour in teaching those students. They favoured farming over coming to school and it shows in their attitude the day they DECIDED to show up in school. I couldn't live that way and that's why I got another part-time job in a commercial bank.
I still wanted to understand how teaching works and because I love connecting with others, I got a teaching job shortly after I finished my service year. I taught Economics and I must say, I love my students. I had so many classes to teach but I was enjoying it. I didn't complain really but the major stress is when you are about to grade their scripts hahaha. I was given senior classes and we had back then, 3 senior classes which I was taking. The first senior class that we call S.S1 had three arms, the same with S.S2 but only S.S3 had 2 arms. So, I taught 8 classes back then.
My students loved me. They would always flock around my table in the staff room that made so many teachers complain. As expected, the females were coming more than the males and it made some teachers uncomfortable hahaha. They felt I was having something to do with the students. I laughed anytime I see their reactions because how is it possible for someone to have something to do with how many students again? It shows you the kind of society we live in.
So, I was dedicated to my students so nothing they said matters to me. They even changed my staff room to a distant place and still, the students were undeterred 🤣🤣😂. There were times either due to public holidays that our classes didn't hold, anytime they had free time, they would rush to my table and ask me to teach them. I felt bad one day when another teacher told them he wanted to use their free time and they lied that I had already booked it. They ran to my table and asked me to come. It was when I was halfway teaching them that the teacher came to verify and I got a wind of what happened.
My reward came - what made the whole thing a wonderful experience and I was delighted. For the few ones in S.S2 that joined the S.S3 in their government examination, none of them failed. Not even a single F. They all passed, even the students I felt wasn't strong enough at that time based on my interactions with them. I felt so fulfilled and excited. It required even the Principal and the Proprietor to call me into their office to appreciate my effort to make those students pass. I feel it was easy because they love me so they paid attention to everything I said just like when you hate a teacher, even if that teacher explains in the best way possible, no one would get it.
I felt justified, rewarded and happy, not because I was given a monetary reward (even though they promised it but they still didn't give it) nor because I was receiving a huge salary but because I put my heart there for those students, I put time and effort out even beyond my job description because I saw them as my brothers and sisters and I was rewarded with their efforts too.
One of them messaged me many years ago and told me he went to the university to study Economics just because of me - my kind of person, the way I taught the subject and make him fall in love with it. Funny enough, I still chat and speak with a whole lot of them even to this day. It's funny how life works and I feel I got the reward for the labour I put out there. The fruit of my labour came in handy and I milked it to perfection. 😍😍😍
Thank you for your time.
You are an awesome teacher for your students love you. It just shows what kind of teacher you are and how you give importance to educating kids. I hope more and more teachers will be as passionate as you are so more students will be as learned. We can't solely base in on purely academics alone but it's also on the interaction and treatment we give to the kids.