Albert Einstein asserts that, education is what remains after one has forgotten what he learned in school.  Guadalupe claims that, teachers are the most important agents in the educational process because they directly organise students’ learning experiences. Others claim that, good teachers are the life blood of any good education system. Why these claims; and many similar ones that are not cited here? What do these claims have to do with self-efficacy? I read an article on umuseke.rw published on June 12 where a school headteacher was hit by his superior amidst his immediate school community.

This, of course, for any rational being, would raise many questions as to what heinous manner of wrong would have warranted such a dehumanising reaction onto a professional colleague. As a classroom instructor, I spent a sleepless night trying to make sense of the whole scenario. What prevented restraint? As educators, we certainly face insurmountable challenges as we endeavour to do our job.

Severally, we have gone out of our way to give our learners what we do not have, or even anticipate to ever receive.

Nonetheless, there is a positive side to these challenges. For as a classroom teacher, I realised that we need to give our learners what we cannot get from other people, or even what we did not receive from the education systems that fashioned us. A modest case is that, even if you were not taught to care, whether from home or school, you need to teach children to care. I chanced to interact with a team of very high-end teachers at Silver Bells who were discussing a fundamental topic — child protection — with their school director, Evas, who is herself exceptionally passionate about education and doing a great job with her team.

The teachers on the team were all determined to offer their utmost care to children irrespective of what could be heavy on their hearts, or the unnecessary hitting they could have endured.  Notwithstanding, whether you had a chance to go to a school that was committed to protecting children, or the one I went to where hitting, scolding, shaming in public were the order of the day, our children deserve our protection, love, and care.

As a classroom teacher, I have to be ready and firm to offer an ideal learning environment that nurtures my students for self-efficacy. Remember that, self-efficacy is one’s belief in one’s ability to succeed in a specific situation or accomplish a task (Bandura: 1977). Bandura claims that, performance outcomes, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and physiological feedback, all contribute to promoting self-efficacy. At this point, it is probably right to ask; as teachers who make self-audit, do we promote self-efficacy among our learners or we are swayed into the old thinking that, "might is right”?  Of course, teachers are real conduits of effective transformation of societies through quality learning, yet, should they meet toxic exogenous conditions, as was the case with the incident referred to in this article, their ability to positively impact the youngsters entrusted into their hands can be hardly guaranteed. What voices do teachers carry in their minds?

I talked with some teacher-friends not long ago, and realised that one big cause for alarm among teachers is the cacophony of noises they carry in their minds. These distorted voices need strong, but not self-assertive, school leadership environment that can smooth them out in order to reduce teachers’ counterproductive behaviours.

Our teacher-superiors need to style up and set their leadership footings onto self-efficacy so that, by the same token of value, they can step up our self-efficacy. We will, in turn, transit the same to our learners.

There is nothing automatic about this; for as teachers, we can’t claim to be born with self-efficacy, or that it is something we can learn from our teacher training colleges?

The English people say; "tame a tree when it is still young”, similar to a Rwandan description; igiti kigororwa kikiri gito. I bet, if parents merely leave their children’s self-efficacy in the hands of fate, the resultant gaps enhanced are going to trigger a continuous stream of tears. I want to strongly believe that a good education should involve enough and impact a child with a good repertoire of skills including self-efficacy. 

My contention here is that, as teachers (our stakeholders inclusive), we have a duty to educate children who will be able to tackle the challenges their future holds; yet, being mindful also that we do not have a direct hand of control onto what the future holds for them.

Self-efficacy is a key facet that our children need to be educated into rather than snatching it away from them due to some other irresponsible forces. In the final analysis, the wits and aspirations of educators like Einstein, Guadalupe and Bandura will even make bigger and more realistic sense in our highly competitive world.