Manal Kouetan
“Do you see what I see, my teacher?”, A child whispered in the fourth grade, and he looks out of the window of the class towards the sky, after he was able – for the first time – to read a sentence he wrote in his trembling handwriting, and with his heart, which he shivered with.
He was not asking me about clouds, nor about the sky of the sky .. He was asking about himself. About his ability. About his being that started to appear for him for the first time, as if he had seen her manifestation in that cloud.
Since I was subjected to education, a teacher and then I graduated in the career ladder to a school principal, I realized that our great mission is not only in teaching reading, writing and reckoning, but in teaching the child how to see himself, how he embraces himself, how he feels that he is part of this world .. has a place, voice, and right.
– The school is not a classroom .. It is a bosom of identity: We do not make successful students only, but we build a person who knows who he is, trusts his capabilities, differentiates between righteousness and error, and he has the courage to say “no” whenever it is obligatory, and “I am here” whenever his voice is absent.
– Some victories are not measured by signs: I remember “Jassim”, the child who used to tear his school papers before he is delivered. He was not indignant on the material, but on itself. He was afraid of failure, so he chose to withdraw before he was discharged. I once told him: “I believe in you, even when you do not do,” so he smiled shyly, as if the words were the key that opened his little cage.
Education is not an education .. It is the human industry: the child is a being filled with questions, with concerns, with small, deferred dreams. When we see him with the eyes of the educator, not the teacher, we realize that every interaction with him is an opportunity to make a responsible citizen, think, initiate, and bear. That child who we teach him how to apologize sincerely, how tolerate courage, how he expresses himself without fear, is the citizen who will build a healthy, balanced society, listening to the other and respecting the other, without giving up himself.
– A fingerprint that we leave .. Do not erase the years: In the midst of the social challenges we face, and accelerated educational changes, our role remains as stable educators in its essence: to be a guardian of the meaning, a bonding of values, and a protector of the child’s spirit from being submitted amid the pressure of performance and numbers. Sadiq .. it is a seed that we implant on the homeland.
– Let our permanent question be in front of every test and sign: “Has this child become closer to be a beneficial person, a good citizen, a spirit that others see and hear?” If the answer is “yes” .. that is the difference that we make, and that is the effect that remains, and generations grow that know the way.
