Click here to download the latest newsletterr: Vol-16-Ed-6.pdf
Our oldest teacher and headteacher Londiwe Dlamini joined Matjana Preschool as a teacher in 2 June 2015. She has been a teacher for three years and a headteacher for 4 years. She shared the news that she is leaving Matjana Preschool with the other teachers only a few weeks before she left.
In mid-June she started preparations for her marriage. After she got married towards the end of June, she didn’t come back at work. It was a little bit challenging because Khetsiwe, our other full time teacher was still new and Precious had just started her part time teaching job at the school. So in addition to coping with missing Londi, there was also some challenged for the remaining teachers to overcome.
Teachers couldn’t believe it
Khetsiwe said that Londi’s departure was a big surprise. “I was quite shocked when I got this news and at first I thought it was prank as Londie was full of jokes.” Precious agreed, “I too, couldn’t believe it at first. I was considering myself as still under orientation.”
How to explain to the kids
You may have seen in our meet the kids section that some of our kids like asking questions. Teacher Khetsiwe said they didn’t know how to tell the kids that Londiwe has left. She said, “I knew that even if I didn’t tell them, there are kids who will definitely ask us.” Precious and Khetsiwe told kids that teacher Londie had left the school. But even after telling them, the kids either didn’t truly understand or didn’t believe their teacher had left. “We still got a lot of ‘where is teacher Londi’ and ‘when is she coming back’,” Khetsiwe said.
It calls for big changes
In last month’s newsletter we reported that Khetsiwe had started her ECCD training and Precious started working to cover the days she is training. Now, because Londi has left, it called for big changes. Precious will be working every day so that Khetsiwe can go to college. The school committee decided that there is a need for the school to get a third teacher to still cover up for Khetsiwe now that Precious works every day.
The teachers together with the school committee made up posts and later conducted interviews. We were very interested to see that three of the interviewees were students in Matjana Preschool’s first ever class. Now they have completed high school and are looking for work!
The school chairlady said, “ The competition was very high among the applicants such that it was very hard to choose who will be the teacher.” The interviewers said all the interviewees answered the prepared set of questions perfectly.Khetsiwe said, “I’m am very lucky to have conducted the interviews along with Precious and the chairlady, otherwise, I was nervous to conduct the interviews on my own.” Khetsiwe said it was never going to be easy to interview friends and her agemates.
After a number of consideration, one of the first students of Matjana Preschool was chosen to be the next teacher for our school. We will hear more about her in the upcoming newsletter. She will start when school resumes for the third and final term of 2022, in September. We will dearly miss Londiwe and appreciate all the hard work she has done for the school in the past seven years. We wish her the best for the next phase of her life being married.
We are also very excited to have a new teacher, and one who started her school life at Matjana Preschool. It seems almost impossible that so much time has passed. We are really pleased to have created a preschool that has lasted, thanks to the commitments of our teachers, community members and financial supporters. We look forward to having one of our former students beack at preschool teaching, and hope she will follow Khetsiwe into ECED diploma training.
For now we are closed for school holidays. The past two years have been very hard for Matjana and all Eswatini schools due to COVID 19 and political unrest. However, we haven’t had any interruptions since the beginning of 2022. We wish our teachers and kids a happy three weeks break!
