DEDICATION
4.5 CONCLUSION
5.1.6 The Rhetoric of Dedication/ Caring
a daily journal where they record what they did in every lesson. They should have an IQMS file. There should be assessment files, there should be workshop files. So, they need to have those files. As a professional, you should always have paperwork because sometimes you need paperwork to protect yourself (KT 14).
In this case, there seems to be an understanding that teachers are expected to do administrative work as part of their work. The rhetoric indicates indirectly that a professional teacher has to be well-organised, be conscientious about keeping records, be well-prepared for lessons, and be enthusiastic about attending professional development workshops. When all of these are considered, then administrative work is seen as something positive and a necessity. However, considering the other participants’ views on administrative work, there may be other issues which make administrative work seem onerous. Perhaps the issues are systemic rather than institutional and exert a lot of pressure on the teachers.
Faith: Come three in the afternoon, I am taking those assessments with me to mark at home until one o’clock in the morning. Sometimes I have to come to school early (for morning classes). The school starts at 7:30 but sometimes I come at 6:30 or 7:00 for morning classes so that I’m able to finish the syllabus on time (FT 29).
These teachers talked about how some teachers go beyond their call of duty. Noah talked about teachers who committed themselves to teaching extra classes for the benefit of learners, and Faith talked about teaching extra classes but highlighted some personal reasons, for instance, completing the prescribed work on time. So, what these teachers were saying about dedicated or caring teachers was that their work was not time bound, whether it was teaching or marking assessment tasks. The rhetoric was about how teachers dedicated themselves into working hard for the benefit of their learners. It seems that the extent of dedication was about time spent on duties outside the normal hours and not some other potential indicators such as, improvement of teaching strategies with the aim of reaching every learner. Noah and Faith’s views of dedication seemed to follow a narrow view and reduced it to a single factor about the quantity of time.
Dedication or caring was also seen as a type of volunteering work. As Kadesh explained:
Kadesh: We have a teacher in our school who has just taken in a learner who is being abused by the grandmother. The grandmother beats up the child and there is a teacher in my school who volunteered to take care of the learner (KT 26).
In this case, teacher care extends to ‘adopting’ the learner informally. The teacher willingly wanted to protect a learner from physical abuse, whilst providing for all the other basic needs such shelter, food and emotional needs. What comes through about dedication is that it goes beyond taking care of learners’ academic needs to meeting those needs which are not academic. The rhetoric was about teachers who were dedicated to holistic development of the child (taking care of all the aspects of child development).
When teachers are dedicated to this holistic development, their teaching creeps into their family time as indicated by Noah and Faith.
Noah: There is not much holidays because teachers work through the holidays doing the marking, especially mid-term and trial exams (NT 51).
Faith: I don’t get paid for all the extra classes that I do. Whether I teach during school holidays, whether I come an hour earlier, whether I teach in the afternoon. Even for work that I do at home, I don’t get paid for all the work that I do outside of school hours. When exams run through up to the last day of school, then it means that teachers can only mark during the holidays. So there are no holidays (FT 30).
These two teachers noted how the holidays were not really holidays as they were largely or generally understood to be. They observed that teachers’ work continued over the holidays, which then implied that teachers have to steal their family time in order to dedicate some time to their teaching work. Faith talked about all the additional work that she has to do without any recognition. She suggested that there was no monetary value attached to caring. While Noah talked about how the marking of assessment tasks took over the ‘holidays’ or family time of teachers, Faith talked about how the teaching work invaded her family time (whether it is during the school terms or the holidays) because of all the extra work that she has to do without any remuneration.
Furthermore, Faith recognised that teachers were not the only ones who were dedicated to the children’s education. She acknowledged that there were parents who were dedicated:
Faith: There are parents who are really passionate about their children’s education. There are parents who would really worry you. They want to know how their kids are doing. They check their children’s books so much so that I, as a teacher, am always on my toes because I know that so and so’s parent always check… (FT 41).
By being dedicated, Faith meant those parents who wanted teachers to update them about their children’s progress, when she indicated that parents would want to know “how their kids are doing”. She talks about parents who worked hand in hand with teachers for the benefit of their children, by checking the work that the children do at school. In this case, the rhetoric of dedication by parents tied in with the rhetoric of monitoring since the teacher felt that she was accountable to these parents.
Dedication or caring was a positive role when it assisted either the teacher or the learners to be successful in the classroom. However, it was also negative if teachers over-dedicated themselves to a point of burnout or when parents over-dedicated themselves in a manner that made teachers feel pressurised.