We thank the teachers
They help instil culture of reading
UNDERPAID, under-appreciated and often over-looked for the vital role they play in a child’s literacy development.
This might be the exact words many teachers across the country and broader region would use to describe themselves, but on Wednesday October 5 it was World Teachers Day. This gives us the opportunity to focus on the crucial role teachers play.
Cape Town resident Ayabulela Maneli, who is now 46, says she remembers her house not having any books in it apart from the Bible.
I wouldn’t exactly say my family was suspicious of books, but they saw books as something that belonged in somebody else’s world, she says.
She doesn’t remember books being a big feature at nursery school either.
I didn’t notice it because I was already used to a world of no books,” she recalls.
But then, when she got to primary school, everything changed. She puts this down to one specific teacher.
Mrs Dyasi didn’t tell us to love books. She showed us how much she loved them herself, and she made story time into such a wonderful thing. I remember the pictures and the words feeling like something that you climbed inside,” she says.
With this came an awakening that has stayed with Maneli her whole life.
I don’t know if somebody else would have come along and done the same thing for me when I was older. It is hard to say. But Mrs Dyasi came along just at the right time to get me into the swing of things to see the million other worlds I could be by loving books. To this day, that is something I feel and now I encourage young children all around me to have that same passion.”
For several decades now, researchers have looked at this type of phenomenon: the ways in which teachers can cement or in some cases, erode, the strong building blocks that are required for the development of a child’s literacy and love of books.
Although the academic literature on the topic is endless, there are some concepts that stand out as something that we can recognise in the people who spend a good part of our children’s day leading them in the learning-teaching space.
The first is that of supporter of learning”: This means that the teacher promotes literacy through affirmation acknowledging and raising the students’ work to promote learning.
The second one is that of storyteller: reading or telling a story and encouraging children to respond is a vital part of promoting a culture of literacy. By encouraging children to respond, the teacher gets the children to engage and see the joy that comes when reading isn’t something passive or something that shuts you out, but is instead something you can participate in.
Sadly, one also has to look at examples where these building blocks are eroded, or worse yet, smashed down. By instilling fear in children, or making reading into something stressful, teachers have the power to create a negative association for a child between books and fear.
To those doing the opposite we salute you. It takes a village to raise a child, and teachers are a big part of that!