For most of my life, I hated school. There were years I went from being in the top five of the class in performance, to barely making it in Standards 7 and 9.
The same for my sporting career. I went from being a hopeless athlete to setting new records for the 100 and 200 metres at my high school, Belgravia High.
As I lived with foster parents all my life, I often felt like an outsider to the traditional family stories told at school. My school letters were always signed by a guardian and not a parent. I never had a parent at a school meeting all of my school life.
Most days I thought of quitting school. For two reasons: embarrassment and fear. I was embarrassed and fearful of always being singled out for some mockery by others. Learners and teachers can be cruel.
What changed my school career from me nearly becoming a dropout to staying the course? At Heatherdale Primary School it was four people: My Sub A teacher, Mrs Salie, the deputy principal Mr Tabisher, my Standard 4 teacher Mr Platt and Mr Goldschmidt the caretaker.
These individuals made me believe that I was safe at school and made me see that my fears were not an impediment but a challenge we would jointly overcome.
Mr Goldschmidt allowed me to help him clean the school and became my role model of hard work and storytelling. I felt valued. During school holidays I would go to the school to help him work, just to listen to his stories about his life as a child from Riversdale.
In high school, it was Mr Britten, Mr Pretorius and Ms Joemat who took on that role. When I broke the 100m school record in Grade 12, Mr Britten bought me a tracksuit, because I had no running kit. Just me, my bare feet on the track.
I was overwhelmed that he had done that for me. That faith in me took me all the way to the “Champs of Champs” at Athlone Stadium.
At the start of my matric year, Mr Pretorius, my accountancy teacher took me aside and gave me a hard "man up" talk. He pulled no punches about where I was lacking and what I needed to do to get through matric. It was hard and harsh. But he concluded with “Davids, I believe in you. I am here for you, anytime. Come, we will do this together”.
I got through matric because he kept his word and constantly pitched up in my life during my matric journey.
A month ago, at South Africa’s National Teaching Awards, a quiet servant of education, Ridwan Samodien, the principal of Kannemeyer Primary School in Grassy Park, was awarded the Kader Asmal Lifetime Achievement Award. Mr Samodien is the combination of all the educators I wrote about in this column.
Transforming the lives of hundreds of learners who daily want to drop out of school, he is the one who has become the reason they stay and go on to become successful learners.
In thousands of schools across this country, more than 50% of the learner cohort struggle daily with thoughts of quitting school – from Grade 1 onwards.
Everything about the system militates against a successful learning environment. It is for reasons as basic as mine was: fear and embarrassment.
Samodien is an educator who understands that. He is a human who became a principal, having those same feelings. With his staff, he has turned a school into an exciting exploration centre.
Samodien has shown us that an educator who pitches up in a child’s life and verbalises their belief in them, helps that learner to fall in love with the school and with learning.
That is what saves learners from caving in to fear and embarrassment and one day ending up holding signboards at traffic lights.
* Lorenzo A Davids.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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