Education is about passion

Helene Bam
Zubeth Morkel has been a teacher at M & K Gertze High School in Rehoboth for almost 27 years and shares her passion and wisdom about making a difference in the lives of learners.

1. What subjects do you teach and how else are you involved at your school?

I am teaching Office Practice to grade 10, 11 and 12 and Afrikaans to grade 10 and 12. I coach netball and I am also involved in athletics at the school. I was team manager of National teams for netball previous years, and also received USASA grading as an umpire in SA. This year, I changed and am now coaching the girls soccer team, which I really enjoy. I also received the best teacher award at my school in 2012.

2. What made you decide to pursue a career in education?

My mother was a teacher and my father also. So I had to become one, too. I had to be creative in making teaching not only a career, but also a passion. I quickly realized that good teaching is as much about passion as it is about reason. I have a love for learning that often has you seeking more information about things. I enjoy working with children and receive great satisfaction from helping others learn new things. Because I love challenges, it is specifically a challenge to see how a learner grows from a F- student to an A-student. I love motivating students to learn, teaching them how to learn, and doing so in a manner that is relevant, meaningful, and memorable.

What is important is my sense of humour. This is very important — good teaching is also about humour. It’s often about making jokes, mostly at your own expense, so that the ice breaks and students learn in a more relaxed atmosphere where you, like them, are human with your own share of faults and shortcomings. Good teaching is about caring, nurturing, and developing minds and talents. I taught them one philosophy in life that as a child, the place where you find yourself has been handed by you by chance. But what you become depends on the decisions you make, and these decisions are limited only by the possibilities you imagine.

3. Please tell us what the most rewarding part of your job

At the end of the day, good teaching is about having fun and fundamental rewards when locking eyes with a student in the back row and seeing the synapses and neurons connecting, thoughts being formed, the person becoming better, and a smile cracking across a face as learning all of a sudden happens. Good teachers practice their craft not for the money or because they have to, but because they truly enjoy it and because they want to. I have an example of a student who can only speak English and Portuguese in my Afrikaans class who enrolled in Grade 10. He passed Afrikaans at the end of his JSC examination - that’s because of teaching with passion! I also take the challenge of new learner from the North who never had Office Practice in grade 8 and 9. She enrolled for Office Practice in Grade 10 and she got an A in the external examinations, and also falls under the top 50 of Namibia. You have that Elsie Gowases Case. A dropout learner in grade 9 and never passed KWP. Good teaching is also about bridging the gap between theory and practice.

4. Why should young people consider a career in education?

The challenges are exciting, and the rewards are priceless. Few accomplishments in life can measure up to the smile on a young boy’s face when he first realizes that he can, at long last write a good essay , or answer that difficult comprehension, or the delight expressed by a young woman who can do touch typing with no or few errors. So, if you want to inspire and instruct the next generation of musicians, mathematicians, nurses, scientists, astronauts, and philosophers, choose teaching! Teaching is the mother of all professions!

5. According to you what are some of the greatest challenges that the Namibian education system?

One of the biggest challenges in Namibia is high expectations. You expect that we will have money, expect a high pass rate, expect quality teaching etc. Expectation leads to disappointments. The Namibian education system still face many stumbling blocks including high drop-out rates, transfer cases and the quality of teachers.

Most of our teachers who are learning though distance studies, will never be the same as a teachers who are at university or college and are evaluated for their practical lessons. These teachers are the one who set the basic foundation for reading writing in espcecially the primary schools. They must get enough practical exposure on how to teach primary children to read and write. We have many school children in grade 8 who cannot even read! We have to monitor whether teachers work is up to standard or not.

We know only too well that although Namibia has some wonderful schools, in both rural and urban areas but too many of our schools still get very poor results and are not giving our children the skills they need for a globalised, knowledge-based society. We find ourselves in social and economic circumstances that are hostile to good education, where too many people are hindered in their learning because of extreme poverty, now being made worse by HIV and Aids.

We find ourselves in social and economic circumstances that are hostile to good education, where too many people are hindered in their learning because of extreme poverty, now being made worse by HIV and Aids.