12/08/2025
BEST TEACHER? OR BEST ENTERTAINER?
My Teaching Journey Story – Episode 1
One of the private secondary schools I worked with had a funny weekly tradition: every Friday, students would vote for the “Best Teacher of the Week.”
Sounds nice, right?
Well… here’s the twist.
“Best” here didn’t mean best at teaching, instilling morals, dressing smartly, or even being prepared. It meant the teacher with the most charisma—the one who could walk into class dancing, making funny moves, and getting the loudest shouts from students.
Some teachers spent up to half the lesson period (40 minutes) hyping up the class—dancing, cracking endless jokes—while actual teaching took the back seat.
Class captains took notes on the most entertaining teachers. By Friday, the votes would roll in. Some teachers even did assignments for students, gave them gifts, or boosted their marks just to secure more votes.
And then there was a teacher, Kelechi, fondly called Uncle KC. The master of the game.
He sometimes walks into class with a football, plays with the students before teaching, and always gets the highest votes. He was so good at this “performance” that the school used him as a benchmark—if you were paired with him on voting day, you had to get at least half his votes, and failure to achieve that meant “not good enough.”
Then… my turn came.
I was paired with Uncle KC.
He got over 100 votes.
I got 30.😥
Students cheered him like a superstar. The proprietress danced with him.
And me? I just stood there—poor me wey no sabi do shakara 😄. I hated noise, didn’t bribe for votes, "stingy in marking"🫣, me wey spend my free periods giving extra lessons and teaching morals.
I was in deep thought: "I was taught the use of set induction to get students ready for a lesson—but not this kind of drama. Did my lecturers skip some secret chapter? Should I have studied acting instead of teaching methods? Despite adding humor to my lessons, it's not equal to "acting and dancing like others." And me that even won ‘Best Teacher of the Year’ where I taught previously 😳—what’s going on here?"
I could see pity in the eyes of those who voted for me. Some came to hug me quietly. I smiled, but inside, I wanted to disappear.
When it was over, I went to my class, wrote my resignation letter, and attempted to give it to the principal (he was away at a meeting). I took it to the proprietress’s compound, but she was on a call, so her son collected it. I didn’t even wait for dismissal.
Not long after, calls started flooding my phone from the proprietress, her husband, and some teachers…
What happened next will sho ck you...
I’ll share in the next episode.
But let me ask you…
❓ Is that really how to measure a teacher’s effectiveness?
❓ Should students be the main assessors in that way?
❓ And… did I react too quickly by resigning?
©️ Amarachi Ejike
