The Interdisciplinary Chronicles 112

Making good use of your free time can sometimes provide an opportunity for redirecting your energy towards positive causes or venturing into new areas of competence. This makes you a more versatile team player. Coming back to a further reflection on how I was able to navigate the teaching career while adding value to my profile, I realized that my life as a teacher was not more yielding. When I was not teaching, I had nothing to do especially in a rural community with no recreational facilities, no electricity, no steady radio and TV signals; not to mention phone and internet. One could only play soccer with colleagues or students. Sporting days were really exciting as it was a community event bringing both teachers and students, including community members to showcase different sports talents, entertain themselves and relieve from school activities and boredom. Apart from these sporting activities, I decided to be available in school whether I had lessons to teach or not. Gradually, I started assisting on other administrative activities such as students discipline, guidance and counselling; though I had no office space for such activities. Because of this new commitment, my principal offered me the keys of the library; it was open only during break because of the absence of a school librarian so I now became more available to serve students and teachers needing the library. I took up a pro bono overtime duty as an acting librarian. The library management tasks gave me enough space to continue with my work with students; and in addition I had access to thousands of books to read. In the next chronicle, I will be narrating how my experience with counselling students caused me to research about ways of helping them, understanding the communities they come from and also trying to read more about the situation of their communities and how it is affecting their education and social life; the core reason why I chose to start doing community engagement activities as part of my teaching outreach activities.