Personal Statement: A Career As A Teacher In Nigeria

Born to a peasant farmer in Nigeria, Africa, I had so many unpleasant experiences growing up as a child: I suffered lack of every basic need as a result of poverty and I suffered neglect as a result of ignorance, oppression, depression and deprivation. Growing up in the midst of these social monsters was not fun at all. I can still remember vividly being absent from school on many occasions due to a lack of such basic writing materials as pen and pencil and not being able to afford even the cheapest footwear throughout elementary and Junior High School. I was not alone in this social trauma: My parents, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, cousins and nieces had their share of the bitter cake, and more than half of my community was also …show more content…
It was at this school that I was first introduced to human services field. Being a fresh graduate from the university, I thought that my role as a teacher would only be about teaching, but when I got to the classroom, I realised there was a lot more to it than that. Most high schools in my country do not have social worker, psychologists or support workers to help students with such needs as can only been provided by human services professional. As such, some teachers like me combined some aspects of human services with teaching. For example, while teaching, I observed some set of students always had problems with their teachers, subjects and almost everyone and everything around them. In order to help these students, I took it upon myself to be at school one and half to two hours before the start of school to counsel with students who had social and academic problems. I also had to, on the approval of the school principal, invite certain parents on several occasions to counsel with them and their children/wards about their ongoing family problems. This was when I began to understand the emotional and psychological war certain children from broken homes have to grapple with. Though I am not from such a home, I know what children from such homes go through as I was closely involved in informal counselling with some of my students from such homes. Due to my close involvement, I was able to offer solutions to some of their seeming nagging