#SchoolDiaries

In the past week, social media (particularly Facebook) has been awash with some recollection of school events by past students of some secondary schools - hash-tagged #...Diaries. Strangely enough, old students of the very best secondary schools in the country (like Accra Academy) are not engaged in this, leaving the 'allo' schools to do it.… Well, in this post, I share one with you.

Mr. Edward Suidi joined the school when I was in class 5 and was assigned the duty of strengthening our grasp on the rules pertaining to the Queen’s language. A fresh graduate with the intention of leaving an indelible mark on the minds of his students, he strived to teach us how to properly speak and write the language with some tact and finesse. Although he was a very firm believer of corporal punishments and I was a constant feature on the ‘names of talkatives’, I liked him.

One day after school, he asked me to wait for him - he wanted to discuss something with me. My friends and I had scheduled to go play video games at one’s house at the time, but the latest development left me with no choice other than waiting. When he was done marking some class assignments, he found me outside and asked that we go to his house which was situated behind the school. I obliged and waited for him whilst he freshened up and donned his ‘Christmas attire’. “Let’s go”, he said. “Go where, sir?” was my response. He saw a quizzical look registered on my face when he said he wanted to meet my mum to discuss something with her (remember my post from last week? This time I was quite confident because I knew I hadn't breached any school regulations which I was fond of doing, by the way). Like the proverbial sheep being led to the slaughterhouse, I obliged.

The house I lived in was hedged at the time, and one only needed to stand on the tip of his toes to see what was happening in the yard. I did that and saw my mum engaged in a conversation with my grandmother (now late). The same quizzical look I wore early on was also replicated on my mum’s face when she saw me enter the house with my teacher. We greeted them and only my grandmother responded as I would later find out that my mum was trying to figure out what I had done. I laid the foundation for Edward to narrate the reason for preventing me from going to play video games with my friends.

I turned to look at him someway bi when I heard “studies” in his submission as I was on my way to change my clothes. I followed the conversation by looking through the window from the hall. Whilst my mum was quiet throughout the conversation and intermittently wore a smirk, my grandmother was nodding, ostensibly to urge him on. Then my mum called out my name and when I had responded from inside, she asked in Fante that I go into her drawer and pull out all my terminal reports. “3si abaadze?” I asked (to wit, “what did you say?”). She repeated the words, and I retrieved the documents. Edward’s confidence petered away mighty fast when my mum handed him the terminal reports and immediately followed with a question that sought to ask why he thought I needed a studies teacher after looking at the reports. "I teach him Mathematics and English sometimes so he needs no home teacher”, my mum added, and with that Edward was 'summarily dismissed'. But before he would take his leave, my granny sought to find out from him if he didn't do his 'homework' well before embarking on the fruitless journey. I laughed when he had left.

Now forget all that and read on…

Edward Suidi, in trying to awaken the creativity some teachers who preceded him had succeeded in burying, taught us, with an example, how to compose a letter to the headmaster of a senior secondary school detailing out why we could not attend the school we had been admitted to. In his example, he posited three reasons. Now for our home assignment, we were individually to write on the same topic, adducing three reasons why we were unable to attend the schools of our choice.

Our scripts were marked and given to us the next day and about 90% of the class had scored ‘7/10’, and the reason was because we had reproduced his exact example verbatim. On hindsight, he was very charitable with the marks (the main reason why I liked him). Some people scored lower marks and it was because they reproduced his example with mistakes. Can you imagine? However, Jemima, a girl also ranked in the top 5 percentile in the class scored ‘9/10’ and our eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. We clapped for her upon the instructions of Edward as she had distinguished herself with the assignment - she had not towed the popular route we all had. She adduced 3 completely different and relatively better reasons than Edward did in his example. But for a small grammatical error in her composition, Edward would have scored her ‘10/10’, he intimated.

This incident rushed into my mind whilst I was pondering over the details of a conversation I had with an elderly woman yesterday. In driving home a point, she narrated an incident which occurred at the Dusseldorf airport in Germany where she worked as a security officer some years ago. According to her, once she was done searching and directing travelers to the next check point, her duty was done. Most of the Turks (her claim) had a penchant for using unapproved routes after leaving her check point, which led to the officer at the next point drawing her attention to it, albeit harshly. The passion with which she spoke about the fact that she was not responsible for the actions of travelers once they left her ‘line’, and that she was dutifully doing exactly what she had been asked to do, was telling.

In my relatively younger life on earth, I have realized that it is on very rare occasions that people are rewarded for doing ‘exactly’ what they are told to do. In some instances, they are rewarded with something of importance after they have served in the same company for some 20 or more years of their lives. However, what I see often is that people who go beyond doing what is expected of them are those that are rewarded even after just about 2 years in a company. I worked under a boss (a very good mentor in finance) not too long ago, who, in accepting to push through a request for better working conditions, will always ask to see the value one was adding to the working process to merit what was being asked for. If all one had to show was merely doing what was expected of him, then he deserved what was being paid to him and nothing more as it was commensurate with the level of work being done.

Dear reader, simply doing what is only expected of you and nothing more will bring little or no reward, I guarantee you that. But going further to take on some more duties even when not assigned, adding some more beneficial narrative to the report than is being required, producing some more units of the products than is expected of you in a day in a manufacturing plant, by staying back when all others have left at the 5 p.m. closing time to get some work done, draws tangible rewards, I kid you not.

Now after my bath in the morning, I wondered why my mum prevented Edward Suidi from taking me through some English lessons after school, and I steupsed.

Enjoy the fruitfulness this week promises.

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