I, muzungu-Abana-volunteer, refuse to buy into this contract. I would like to change this pattern. I am aware of the challenge... The force of inertia and lack of initiative was the strength of the previous headmaster. A rather nice and affable man, he was everything except a leader. He was a master procrastinator. He had no vision for the school and was so good at wallowing in mediocrity that he managed to lure many people working under him that this was the way to go... ‘You say nothing about my total lack of professionalism and I’ll say nothing about yours’ would have been a way to describe the past Rugerero Primary modus vivendi...
Harsh words? Yes, probably too harsh and perhaps unfair but, from a westerner, white man, ‘performance and results obsessed’ perspective, ... spot on!
The now assistant to the headmistress (i.e. the same person described above), has been at the school for about twenty minutes in the last ten days, doing his own thing, never in the staffroom, not relating to anybody. His old job, was given to a qualified, university trained headmistress about a year ago. She hardly came to the school last year, as she lived more than two hours away. She now lives near the school and is there every day. It is hard for him to live with this reality. There is no way they can ever work together. Any hope for genuine leadership will have to come from the headmistress. I have opted to work with her and have come to the conclusion that he has to go and work in another school... I have suggested this to the local authorities who, on principle agree with my analysis but , who still have not made any decision... they are supposed to do so tomorrow.
So, today, the white bull entered the world of the ex-headmaster... It happened spontaneously and somewhat chaotically, as mentioned at the beginning of this article. I was looking for a pretext to get stuck into this room and grab a couple of bookcases for the staff / resource room which I am trying to set up. I asked a teacher if she had the key to the room. She gave it to me and another teacher came along to help. He told me that this room would soon be needed for an extra classroom. 'Perfect'! This was exactly what I needed to hear. ‘Let’s prepare it now. Let’s clean it!’ The room was a cross of how Charles Dickens would have described the filthiest room in the slums of London (visited by rats at night etc.) and a sort of Cavern of Ali Baba: I discovered among piles of dirty paper, dust all the material that my predecessor had put together in 2007 – some of it was gradually becoming fod for mice (I warned you about Dickens!). There were some lovely children books, just sitting there, unused. So I jumped on the opportunity... I asked the other teacher to go and get a few big boys to come and help cleaning the room, to bring the shelves to the staffroom, while I was sorting the diamonds from the rubbish. I found some material for science and maths teachers – who afterwards told me that they were not aware they even existed. Everywhere on the floor, or vaguely piled together were piles of paper that looked like archives. I took some ‘on the spot’ decisions about what needed to be kept and what could be thrown away. I was a white bull in a very messy room. Serious, radical cleaning was suddenly happening after years of negligence.
Some of the teachers who saw me throwing so much paper away got a bit of a fright... ‘Perhaps we should not throw all of it, the headmistress might need some. ‘True, but unlikely’ suggested however that they help me sort it out. ‘You decide: here is a pile for what we will keep for her and here a pile for what we will throw away’. (The headmistress was at a meeting away from the school). Eventually about 90% was discarded and a fire was started to burn the mice-nibbled-pseudo archives of an era of total mismanagement. I have been told that there is a lot of fire in me... which is probably why I enjoyed so much seeing all that rubbish going into cleansing flames.
Tomorrow the headmistress will be in for a surprise and class 6 children will have a new tidy classroom.
As for the old headmaster, I hope that he will be appointed to a new school and will make a happy fresh start. I wish him all the best, but in my view, he has to go. Tomorrow I need to have a long meeting with the new headmistress and share with her some of my observations of the school and make a few unsubtle suggestions.
White bulls are not known to be subtle...
No comments:
Post a Comment