Shine Contest: My Current Work

Our job is our source of livelihood. It is what we do to earn an income, to take care of ourselves, our family and pay our bills. There are different types of jobs in our world today, remotely and online. While some people work to be paid by others, others work for themselves and end up paying themselves and others if there's one.

I am a teacher. I teach in one of the prominent secondary schools in my city. Although I studied History and International Relations, and since no government job was not coming, I had to search for a private job in order to earn a living. I basically teach History, Government and, additionally, Civic Education.

No, teaching is not my only source of income. I subscribe mobile data, cable TV and electricity for people and I am currently learning how to trade on crypto, I braid hair and also engage in online blogging on Steemit and YouTube.

I actually applied for the teaching job since the school is close to my house. I wasn't sure if their pay would be good, but I applied to the school due to the fact that I was nursing a baby at that time, so I needed a school that was closer to me. That was how I applied to teach in the school. I was interviewed and got employed as the best in the subject.

Although they are very important aspects of the teaching job, the most difficult for me is;

• Writing of lesson notes and marking of examination scripts. As long as I prepare the lesson plan, teaching the students is not difficult, but my school requires that you copy the whole notes into a notebook and present them to the supervisor. And so, it is always difficult for me to copy the notes and also sit down to mark the script because some students' writing makes marking boring for me.

The positive aspects

1. It makes you active, always reading and updated about the things around your field.

2. It makes me feel happy: whenever I go to teach my students, I'm always happy and excited because the students share funny stories that make me laugh. They give me compliments every time and that usually makes me feel excited.

3. It gives me some time to rest because of the holidays that are involved in the teaching system.

4. Most of it all is that it gives me greater joy and makes me feel achieved, because I am contributing to the future of the next generation. I am impacting on children's futures. That's the most positive aspect of the job for me.

5. Lastly, I will add that teaching gives you the opportunity to test yourself how much you understood the lessons you were taught in school, because if you don't understand a lesson, you can't teach others.

Negative Impacts

1. Poor pay: private school teachers are paid peanuts compared to their colleagues in the public sector.

2. Heavy workload: Private school teachers are given a lot of workloads despite the low payment. For instance, I teach three subjects that run from the junior to senior secondary classes.

3. High demand/expectations from both the school management: this usually drains teachers in this sector because they work tirelessly to meet up with the high demands.

4. Teachers in this sector are usually poor because of poor pay. They can't do anything important for themselves because what they earn is basically for feeding.

5. Exposure to insult and assault: teachers are sometimes not respected by parents and students. I remember a parent in my school who came with a stick to beat up a teacher who disciplined a student for insulting the teacher. This happened last month. The school management did nothing but blame the teacher and also withheld his salary as punishment.

6. It has no gratuity plan.

No, I don't intend to do the job for a long time because I've been in it for almost 9 years now, and I have nothing to show for it. Teaching is a nice job, but teaching in my state in the private sector is what I call an exploitation job. Their pay is not commensurating with the efforts we put into teaching the students. Private school teaching in my state and county, to some extent, is not worth it because the teachers teach to grow the school while the proprietors earn and live larger and better than the teachers.

So, I may not stay long in the job because of the poor payment for teachers. I thinking of starting up my own business since government job is not available at the moment, if I land a government job, that won't be a bad idea either. I will run the government job alongside with the business I intend to start.

I'm inviting
@chilaw
@tripple-e
@ninapenda

All pictures are taken with my phone itel A70