The mother of all professions

Schools are centres of knowledge and support, not just in academic terms. As families disintegrate, the profession of teacher has expanded to include a variety of services above the role of providing children with information and assessing their grasp of that information. Teachers are providing food security, trauma counselling, and social work and keep track of continual changes in systems.

While policy makers impose new regulations and technology drives a widening gap between those who have and those who don't have, teachers are feeding, clothing, and nurturing whole communities. They are providing a glimmer of hope to the hopeless. These teachers need help; skills, training, funding, assistance and recognition. Beyond The Classroom supporting the profession is just a start.

"Beyond The Classroom inspires teachers and school management to engage with the world of work, to ask for input from the business sector, to continually explore new relationships with government, NGOs and business in order to provide the best quality education for their children and for the disempowered communities they serve," explains Tshiredo.

Adds Producer Gillian Brollo, "Teachers need to be encouraged, supported and valued. In our new slot My Home Town, Beyond The Classroom explores small town South Africa from the point of view of schools. In a revealing discovery we see that the majority of our small towns are dying a slow death, the glue holding communities together are the schools. In these towns, teachers are heroes."

Watch Beyond The Classroom on SABC1 Sundays at 12.30pm and Mondays at 2pm and take a hard look at teachers charged with huge responsibilities that affect all of us in one way or another. Write to P O Box 2237 Saxonwold 2132, phone or fax +27 (0)11 447 0029 or email and say what you think.