Governing The Teacher’s Soul

Governing the Teacher’s Soul

Governing the Teacher’s Soul

Dhana Sagree Govender, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2016 Dhana Sagree Govender, Ph.D.

Published by Dhana Sagree Govender, Ph.D.at Smashwords

First edition 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

Printed and bound by Novus Print Solutions

Dedication

Matha, Pitha, Guru, Deivam

These Sanskrit words mean Mother, Father, Teacher and God. In my culture, it is said that the meaning of this adage is the greatest truth, and it is the order in which one should offer reverence.

In memory of my parents, Devagi and Moonsamy Gounden, who provided me with love and the wisdom for this journey.

Every person that I have encountered is ‘guru’ because it is through ‘looking into the mirror of souls’ that I have experienced consciousness, awareness of my true self and the ‘Grand Organising Design.’

I am grateful to the teachers who feature in this book for their brilliant conversations.

Contents

Review: Governing the Teacher’s Soul

Dedication

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Chapter One Introducing the teachers

Chapter Two State Governing and Self-governing

Chapter Three The Soul

Chapter Four Influences of History and Culture

Chapter Five Why Teaching?

Chapter Six Critical Incidents

Chapter Seven Corporal Punishment

Chapter Eight Changing Teaching Approaches

Chapter Nine Assessment: What did you learn?

Chapter Ten New Policies and Older Teachers

Chapter Eleven Deskilling: A Painful Process

Chapter Twelve Governing: It’s all about the Gaze

Chapter Thirteen Teachers’ confessions

Chapter Fourteen In Closing: ‘Be the Change...’

References

Table 1

Table 2 Teachers’ Biographic and Professional Information

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Review: Governing the Teacher’s Soul

This book captures what it takes to influence a country regarding the education of young minds. The soul of a teacher is what it takes to nurture a country that still needs to heal, something that should be reflected on by all. To be a true teacher, one must first understand the power one holds for the future of a young democracy with an extremely diverse population. The quality of research provides in-depth understanding of teachers’ various interpretations and perceptions of the environment with one common thread that dwells in all human kind – ‘the desire to make a difference’. A potential blueprint for future enhancement of the teacher development curriculum beyond our country’s borders.

Mpume Langa

Regional Chairperson of Business Women’s Association and Head of ABSA Private Banking KZN

Foreword

Few nations in the world have experienced such extensive education reforms in a relatively short period of time as post-apartheid South Africa. Over 21 years since the legal end of apartheid (1994) the range and intensity of reforms covered everything from educator rationalisation to assessment to curriculum change to teacher preparation to school governance and of course educational management. There were endless workshops, circulars, on-site visits, material publications, fervent promises, top-down demands and even threats. Hardly a week would pass without a teacher being called to another information session or a principal to a briefing meeting. It was as if 350 years of colonial and apartheid education had to be changed overnight.

There was, on reflection, a hyper-rationality to educational change in which it was assumed that the well-intentioned policies of a well-intentioned government would be absorbed into schools by well-intentioned teachers supported by well-intentioned parents.

We were so naïve, ignoring mountains of research that showed not only that educational practice was never a mirror-image of state policy but that every act to change a school or teacher or child leaves in its wake a residue of the reform that is not always positive. Long after the energetic Minister of Education is booted out of office or the evangelically sounding bureaucrats have retired or shifted jobs, schools are left with the effects of the thunder and lightning that accompanied the change moving through institutions long battered by one reform after another punted by the idealistic new government.

Governing the Teacher’s Soul draws our attention to the human impacts of external reforms. Here is a story of real people, teachers, as they unveil the emotional, spiritual, intellectual, physical, organisational and personal impacts of educational change. It is a story about lives and how they are situated in a country and in a context where teachers not only have more or less capabilities for change, they also deal with these imposed demands on their work in different ways.

There is an awkwardness in the title of the book, Governing the Teacher’s Soul, that also reflects its message. You cannot really govern the soul of a person, let alone a professional teacher. You govern time and space, resources and policies, but not really the deep, inner person that makes us so human. Yet maybe that is the point, that policy reforms with such utopian ideals were premised on this wrong-headed notion that you could change not only people’s behaviour and understandings but also their very value-systems and beliefs — the deep things of the soul. That could never happen for either schools as organisations or teachers as individuals; there is too much complexity in what makes us who we are for any policy to govern the way we think, do and live our lives. Which raises the question: how do teachers survive this onslaught on the self?

There is a beautiful closing instruction that a boxing referee normally gives to the two fighters just before he releases them from the mandatory briefing at the centre of the ring: protect yourself at all times. Some teachers do not, and they burn out. Many leave the profession as the demands on their time and devotion increase but the resources do not. Others ignore the reforms, shelving them away from the action routines that experienced teachers know too well and with which they deliver the results. The lack of supervision can actually work to a teacher’s benefit. Many, not knowing better, follow the dictates of the reform with great fidelity even when the promised change does not materialise. But most experienced teachers adapt what is received to their own conditions with the wisdom of experience to guide them. Protecting the soul is an all-consuming mission even when the body breaks down. These are the hidden costs of innovation and few scholars think or write about the human devastation of constantly changing schools or curricula or assessment protocols.

This courageous new book sheds light on the dark side of educational change by making teachers and teachers’ work visible in a way seldom found in published research. And yet this striking publication leaves us with hope. It also draws on stories of how to care for yourself, and how to re-evaluate, question and re-awaken the soul with your humanity in mind.

Governing the Teacher’s Soul could yet prove to be a lifesaver for thousands of teachers across this country, and a serious wake-up call to the next band of evangelical reformers to knock on the teacher’s door with utopian promises of what change can do.

Prof Jonathan Jansen

Stanford University

Former Vice- Chancellor and Rector of the

University of Free State

Acknowledgements

My husband, Manogran Govender, who found his life purpose and shared his journey in his book Diabetes Defeated. Thank you for the honour bestowed on me as your ‘guardian angel’.

My children, Kamentha, Nishalin and Lavanya – Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Be governed by the universal laws. See the perfection in every situation.

My nephew, Prishaun Manikum, and my family of teachers, Selvie Manikum, Ruban and Sulo Govender.

My mother-in-law, Mrs M.Govender, who is an avid reader.

My Soul Sisters who supported me through this journey.

Guruji, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar for his spiritual guidance.

Prof Jonathan Jansen, a doyen of South African education, for his Foreword to this book.

Dr John Demartini, my teacher and mentor, for transforming my life.

Peter and Thea Sage, for the opportunity to experience the world in all its material and spiritual abundance.

Pa Joof, a dynamic international speaker who inspired me.

All my family and friends.

Chapter One

Introducing the teachers

Teachers affect eternity; no-one can tell where their influence stops.

Henry Brooks Adams

Whether they have supported or challenged you, everyone you have ever encountered was your teacher.

"You will never amount to anything!"

These words uttered by a teacher can become either a self-fulfilling prophecy or a challenge. Significant achievers around the world have suggested that these words were their catalyst for success. My mentor, an international human behaviour specialist, researcher and author, bears testimony to the fact that his teacher’s words were futile.

Like me, you may also have heard these words and they may also have made you realise, I am somebody.

What did your teachers say to you at school? How did your teachers make you feel?

Perhaps this is a familiar scenario:

I think that the teacher was a lot different from what the teacher is now. You did not see your teacher as a human being. He or she just stood there in the front of the classroom and imparted this knowledge…

– Rina

Did you, like Rina, see your teachers as inhuman or inhumane? Did your teachers degrade you and tell you that you belonged in the pits? Perhaps your teachers tried to extract information from you by demanding, taunting and teasing. Possibly you nicknamed one of your teachers ‘Beeps’ because he or she was boring enough to put you to sleep. Maybe you feared your teachers. Perhaps one of your teachers hit you with a ruler. Did your teachers give you so much homework that you wanted to put them in room 101 and throw that key away forever? Perhaps you feel that your teachers scarred you for life.

Would you like to know why your teachers did what they did?

Maybe some teachers were different. Perhaps they were the guiding light that transformed your life. Some of your teachers may have praised you. Maybe some of them left you with a deep thirst for knowledge. Others may have inspired you to become the person you are today.

A school teacher (Vee) explains:

"In high school I had excellent teachers. Mr. S. Naidoo was my art teacher who I really respected. He was one of the reasons that I chose art."

Teachers teach through words, actions, values, beliefs, behaviour, and every other aspect of how they conduct or govern themselves. We are all teachers. By being human, we impact the world in which we live in multiple ways: socially, psychologically, emotionally, philosophically, spiritually, and vocationally.

Whether teachers have guided and groomed you or maimed and defamed you, their role in your life is undeniable, even if you are a teacher too. As Henry Brooks Adams aptly stated,

"Teachers affect eternity; no-one can tell where their influence stops."

What if you had an opportunity to examine the lives of your examiners; to peer closely and see how their professional lives have intersected with their personal lives?

What do we know about teachers? Who are teachers really? How do their past experiences impact on who they have become? Why and how did they become teachers? Why did they do what they did? What are their challenges? What are their classroom experiences? What are their insights into – and perceptions of – learners? What do they confess? What lies do they fabricate to deal with the pressure of accountability regarding learner achievement and performance? How do they survive in the face of tumultuous professional change? What is their guiding philosophy? What is their dharma, telos or will to meaning?

What is truth for these teachers? What is it that they fear to say out loud?

And more importantly:

What governs the teacher’s soul?

This book scrutinizes the lives of teachers and may disrupt any notions you might have of who teachers are. It gives the teacher an authentic voice which Goodson (1992) suggests is a ‘counterpoint to the silence’. If you are a school teacher, perhaps you can examine your own life and compare it with the lives of the teachers featured in this book. This book is intended to push boundaries. It probes deeply, tracing teachers’ changing sense of self and identity, and unmasking that which governs the teacher’s soul.

The courageous teachers who share their experiences and insights are: Alan, Vee, Rina, Deb, Nkosi, Brian, Anand, Sipho and Maggie. I would like to acknowledge these exceptional teachers for their brilliant conversations. I am grateful to them for having allowed me into their classrooms while curricular transitions that threatened their professional identities as teachers were underway. For the sake of ethics and confidentiality, and out of immense respect for these teachers, I have chosen to protect their identities through the use of pseudonyms. This book, however, is also one in which a teacher tells her own story.

The issue of race cannot be ignored when representing teachers from within the rainbow nation of South Africa. Prior to 1994, teachers were trained in separate institutions, and taught in schools designated for their own race groups. The post-apartheid era has brought many changes. Cross (1999) cautions that changing identities throughout the history of South African education have highlighted the fact that new identities are constructed only with reference to old identities. He emphasises that the mere denial of old identities, as constructed by apartheid discourse, is insufficient for it leaves that terrain open and uncontested.

A composite table of intermediate and senior phase teachers who teach Grades 4 to 7, their age categories, and other information, can be found in the appendix of this book.

The teachers who shared stories and critical incidents from their personal and professional lives are:

Vee

Vee is a confident and articulate Indian teacher in his mid-30s. He teaches in a former HoD school and has a great sense of humour. Vee describes his personality:

I don’t feel that there is someone I don’t get on with. I relate to everybody. I think it’s because of my character and my nature.

So why has there been a change for Vee? He laments:

I used to love to come to school, now I just come to school.

Why is it that Vee, a talented teacher with an easy-going personality and a positive outlook would want to leave the teaching profession?

Rina

Rina is a dedicated white female educator from an English-speaking background. Her determination to train as a teacher resulted in her enrolling in an Afrikaans medium college and she now teaches in a former NED or ex-Model C School. Rina’s commitment to bring ‘heart’ into teaching is reflected in her own practices and techniques of self-governance which are guided by her conscience.

She reflects:

I am feeling guilty all the time... And I think, ‘Why am I doing this?’ You start to question yourself, ‘Why am I doing this?’; ‘Is it myself that is ineffective?’; ‘Or what is going wrong here?’ So lots of unanswered questions. Lots of feelings of guilt. And lots of feelings of ‘Am I in the place that I am meant to be?’ Those questions I obviously don’t have every single day. It is quite an emotional ride.

Rina has tried to implement reform policies as closely as is possible–almost to the letter as stipulated–but why is she frustrated with her work? Why is she experiencing guilt?

Maggie

Maggie is a white female educator who teaches in a former NED or ex-Model C school. She taught between 1973 and 1977, and then took ‘a huge break’, after which she returned to teaching in 1995. Maggie’s own schooling commenced more than half a century ago and this is how she described it:

I had a bit of a privileged education. I went to a private school.

Her description of her teachers was, Oh, they were awful. They were dreadful when I started primary school in the late 50s ... you got hit in those days and hard.

What is interesting is the way she describes herself as a teacher:

I think I am a bit of a dragon. I always have been. Some teachers are quiet but I am not quiet.

How does Maggie deal with the culture shock of changing demographics in the classroom of the democratic South Africa?

Brian

Brian is an Indian male deputy principal with approximately 22 years’ teaching experience. He teaches in a former HoD school. He entered the field because of the convenience and lure of a bursary. His early family background and his survival within a poverty-stricken environment give some insight into his future goals. His willingness to gain knowledge is part of his strategy for survival in the teaching fraternity. His frustration comes from his current work environment which does not support his value system for change. Being in a leadership position, he aspires to being a principal in the near future. His discontentment stems from his motivation for change, which is met with resistance, both from his senior management and from older staff members, who he describes as ‘energy drainers’.

The school environment is not supportive of his goals. So what does he resist and how does he cope with the changes that have filtered through the system?

Anand

Anand is a hard-working, competent educator who teaches in a former HoD school. Anand is a qualified technician (electrical engineering) and a ‘natural born’ teacher. This is how he described his first experience of teaching without any formal training:

When I first went into the classroom I don’t know... something had taken control of me. Probably it was my intuition or in my genes because my family is in teaching. And I just never felt like I did not belong here. I actually felt that this job is for me.

Can this confident teacher overcome the challenges presented by the new forms of assessment which hit him like a ‘tsunami’? Can his positive outlook allow him to embrace challenges as opportunities for survival, growth and development?

Deb

Deb is an articulate and empowered Indian educator who, at the time of research, was a head of department in a former Model-C school. The demography of leadership is still mainly white within ex-Model C schools, and she would certainly have had to break down stereotypical barriers to have secured that position. Although her theoretical knowledge on assessment is impressive, is it aligned with the knowledge of her soul?

That is the deep side inside of you which I can’t say very loudly...

What is the mask that Deb hides behind? What is it that she can’t say loudly?

Sipho

Sipho is a 50-plus black African educator in a deputy principal position.

He has openly admitted that he belongs to the old school and believes that learners should sit, listen carefully, and speak only when spoken to. He appears to be a strong disciplinarian who believes that learners will cooperate if the teacher is able to ‘give them something’ (alluding to corporal punishment).

How does this relate to the violence that he experienced as a child during the apartheid era?

Nkosi

Nkosi is a 50-plus black African male in a level-one position. He is explicit about his desire to leave the profession and he is whiling away his time, eagerly awaiting retirement within the next three years. In terms of his values, he aspires to the fulfilment of basic needs and a comfortable life. The impact that change has had on an older teacher is highlighted by his sense of fatigue in the profession.

Nkosi: My Friday at school, here at school, I feel very, very tired.

What are the working conditions that wear Nkosi down??

Alan

In terms of the South African demarcation of race groups, Alan is designated Coloured. He has approximately 30 years of teaching experience and at the time when he shared his story, he held the position of deputy principal. This extract epitomises Alan’s positive outlook on life,

I think it’s my nature. I like to help other people. And there are rewards. And I make friends easily, that’s another reward. You know, it is not money. Just when you see people in the street and they greet you and there’s a smile, that’s what it is all about for me and it really does motivate me. There is always something interesting that happens in education, it is not always downhill.

His voice is invaluable as he fearlessly discloses the inside story of assessment and its contribution to the teachers’ identity. His biography is, indeed, colourful with its kaleidoscope of experiences, told through his enchanting stories. This is one of the most poignant confessions, given by an educator who is caught up in a game of survival. But what is it that he confesses?

I have featured the voices of some teachers (Alan, Vee, Rina and Deb) more loudly than others to avoid repetition.

In order to present the life stories as the teachers authentically narrated them, I have adopted what Van Maanen (cited in Fontana and Frey, 2008) calls a ‘confessional style’ and what Fontana and Frey (2008) describe as ‘a soul cleansing’ of the author. As a researcher of teachers’ lives, I had to consider the relevance of my own identity and position. It is my confession, given amid the confession of others. These ‘confessions’ will make readers aware of the ‘complexities, uniqueness and indeterminateness of human interaction’.

Before I tell you more about teachers, let me tell you about myself.

My Story

Have you ever had a dream?

When I was just a little girl, I had big dreams.

I wanted to be smart and important so that I could help people.

But as I grew up, life happened. Is that familiar?

Let me start from the beginning.

A humble background

My roots are in a working-class family. I grew up in a suburb situated in the south of Durban, KwaZulu-Natal. My father worked as a truck driver and my mother was a housewife. I attended state-aided primary and secondary schools. One of the primary schools that I attended had a platoon system where, because of a lack of space, there were morning and afternoon classes. I remember listening to lessons seated on a wooden bench under a tree. I performed well academically and received awards in Grades 1, 8 and 9 (Std 7). I also enjoyed sport. As a scholar, I felt that the schooling system favoured the rich middle class. I wrestled with my self esteem – always questioning everything – even my name.

Suspension from school

During Grade 11 of my secondary schooling, I joined my schoolmates in a school boycott to protest against the quality of apartheid education. Little did I realise that singing ‘we shall overcome’ would result in suspension from school and a future of uncertainty.

Nine months later, (the following year) the scholars were reinstated as a result of community negotiations. I completed my matric successfully with exemption which allowed me entrance into university.

A teacher of teachers

Tertiary education was possible because of the offer of a bursary to study for a bachelor’s degree in paedagogics. Within two years of being qualified as a teacher, I was married; appointed to a school in a different city; obtained an honours degree in education with distinction and most importantly- I became a mother. I