Creativenonfiction # 71 - The Music She Had To Face

This prompt reminded me of something that happened at my place of work some years back. Initially, we the teachers in the secondary school have a staffroom where we all sit whenever we come to school and there we mark the student's notes and do other things. We then wait till it's our turn to teach the classes or the class prefect calls upon us before we go to teach the students.

We have been operating this method for a long time and while it afforded the teachers our own space, it had a kind of disadvantage which was excessive noise making by the students. We do try different methods of curbing this noise all to no avail. We engaged them with lots of exercises, gave punishments to those who disturbed and many more but it had little to no effect as the students only tends to keep quiet when there was a teacher in the class.

It didn't help that one of the rules by the government is to stop the use of canes in schools, you can't even give them punishment for long as there will also be complaints by parents, so we had a meeting with the school management on the next course of action. After much deliberation, we concluded that we would adopt the methods used in the Primary School which is to assign teachers to classes.

This means that we would now have to sit with the children in the class. The staffroom remains because we would need a place to keep some of our records, books, and other things.

The new system was very okay because It afforded us the means of keeping a watchful eye on the students. Though at first it wasn't easy but like every kind of change, it took a while before we all adjusted. I was assigned to a senior class(SSS2).
The school is not a modern school where there are cafeterias where students eat during break. So most of the students come to school with their food flask and eat in the class during break.

This new change brought my attention to something I didn't notice before. There is a girl in my class I was assigned to stay. I noticed she eats a different variety of foods altogether. What I mean is that her food comes (with fried rice, jollof rice, white rice, beans, and plantain) all in small quantities. I asked her why she eats different kinds of food all at once and she told me her mum buys them from food vendors around but when I began to notice some home-cooked meals in some of the food and I knew that something was fishy.

I was very curious because I wondered how her mum would wake up and prepare all this before coming to school. Her mum is also a teacher in the primary school who teaches nursery classes. So after watching the girl for a while, I noticed that the same thing repeats itself every day and she eats different varieties of food, so I began to investigate.

The first thing I found out was that her mum usually brings her food to her before the break. I knew that the food vendor close to the school doesn't sell all these kinds of food, so I knew she didn't buy the food.

So I investigated further and met with her mum one day during their break time. I didn't ask her directly as I started by with just random talks.

"I have to say I commend you because it's not easy teaching children" I said to her to avoid her suspecting my motive.

"How do you cope with lots of school work and also household chores and everything?", I further asked.

"It's not been easy at all. Sometimes I wake up so late, my daughter does most of the house chores before we come to school"

"How are you now able to cook different meals every day?", I asked, trying to be direct this time.

My question seems to catch off guard as she struggles to give me a straight answer.

"Ehm Henn, I do buy food from the food vendor outside, remember I told you I sometimes wake up late", she said trying to hide what I already feared to be the truth.

I tried to steer the conversation away to other things but in a way, I thought that would send a clear message to her that I have already figured out what she does.

After my talk with her mother, I noticed the girl's food was no longer the way it was as she now brought just one kind of food.

It went on for about a week and It didn't take long before they went back to their old ways of bringing different kinds of food.

When I noticed the same thing was repeating itself, I went to her mum once again and told her to stop the act. I told her point blank to desist from taking food from those little children to feed her child as it's not ethical nor ideal. I told her to stop before she faced the music.

Afterwards, I noticed the girl stopped eating in the class and would rather go to her mum's class during break. That was when I knew I had to do something about it but then one of the parents of the children in the nursery class beat me to it.

One day, I was called by the school management that a complaint was made by one of the parents. They told me they had been getting that complaint for a while now but they felt it cant be true but this time around they had concrete evidence.

Apparently, one of the pupils in the teacher'a class was ill and couldn't eat the food packed for him by his mum. The boy started running temperature in class and when reported to the school management, they knew they had to call the boy's mum to come and take him to the hospital for proper treatment. It happened that when the woman checked her son's food, she noticed that some parts had been taken out of it. They said the woman complained that her son had been saying that his teacher does take part in his food for a while but she never believed him.

So I was called to attest to it. I knew with the evidence on ground,there was no use hiding what I knew so I told them all I knew about the issue.

The teacher was summoned and probed. She later confessed she had been taking part in the children's food to feed her daughter. She apologized and promised to stop.

I later heard she was suspended for a while but It didn't take long before she resigned herself. I guess the shame was too much for her. At first, I felt bad about her leaving the school but I later realized that even if I hadn't found out, later on, she would have to face the consequences of her actions.

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