EDUCATION | TEACHING AND MENTORING
TEACHERS: THE JEWELS IN THE EDUCATION CROWN South Africa’s future depends on providing quality education for our youth… but to achieve this we need to pour greater resources in to supporting teachers, writes Taryn Casey of Edufundi.
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t takes a special kind of person to be a caring and committed teacher. One of our Champion teachers, Ms Thobeka Gqirana, a Grade 3 teacher at Litha Primary School in Gugulethu, is a great example of such a teacher. On the cover of our 2017 Annual Report (available on www.edufundi.org.za) is a picture of her welcoming one of her learners into her class using what we call an Entry Routine (top right), which she learnt as part of her mentoring relationship with Joyce Baholo, her Edufundi Foundation Phase mentor. Ms Gqirana follows this routine every day when she welcomes learners to her class. It allows her to “check in” with them to ensure they are ready to learn. This is a crucial part of the school day as the children we support come from
very challenging backgrounds and their emotional wellbeing is an integral part of their learning experience. Ms Gqirana took up the profession late and has only been teaching for three years, but she is a passionate educator for whom teaching is a true calling. With the guidance and support of her mentor, Ms Gqirana has excelled over the past year and epitomises the type of teacher we are supporting and building on the Edufundi Programme. She has strict routines and systems in place in her classroom and uses our techniques to build a very strong learning culture. She also cares deeply for each of her learners and is able to have a fun with them each day, for instance jumping rope at the end of break before teaching time resumes.
Her class achieved a 100% pass rate for Maths in the 2017 systemic evaluations, which is almost unheard of in schools in Gugulethu, and her results are even better than some schools that are blessed with far superior teaching resources than Litha Primary. The school itself excelled with a 90.3% pass rate in Maths and has also improved by 40% in Home Language. Teachers like Ms Gqirana work in the most challenging of circumstances yet are able to rise above those challenges to create an excellent teaching environment for their learners. At Edufundi we believe that such success is possible for all the teachers we support and it is something we strive towards as an organisation. In an opinion piece written by Professor Jonathan Jansen (How Business Can
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