Kayleen Sam Feature : My Journey as a Teacher in Rural PNG

This story was submitted to this site by Alex Makuame , First appeared in Tati''s Journal 

My name is Kayleen Sam and I am from Kainantu in Eastern Highlands Province. I am currently a teacher at Daulo Secondary School and I have been teaching there for close to two years now. This is my story on my journey so far.
When I was a student doing my grade twelve at Goroka Secondary School, I didn’t dream of becoming a teacher as my mind was already set on becoming an accountant. I had good grades and so I thought that that was where I was needed however, I decided to change my choice when filling in the actual school leaver’s form. That was when I decided to take on the profession of teaching and I can see now that this is where I am needed the most. I still have my mind set on taking my accounting degree one day.

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After graduating from teacher’s college in 2014, I began my teaching career at Okapa Secondary School in 2015 and have taught there for six years from 2015 through to 2020. I transferred last year to teach in a new school, Daulo Secondary and this year will mark my eighth year of teaching.
As a young female teacher teaching in a rural area, there are many challenges which I face on a day to day basis. One of the challenges I faced early on in my teaching career was my gender given the distance I had to travel but I have since grown accustomed to travelling the rough terrain just to get to the schools and teach children who deserve to be educated irrespective of geographical challenges. 
Back then, I was a young, single woman when I was posted to teach at Okapa Secondary School and so I received a lot of disagreements from my family and friends discouraging me to go there. Since the school I was posted to was located in a rural place and had continuous problems with road conditions and sometimes road blocks by rascals along the highway, the thought of a young female teacher teaching and living in a rural place, travelling along dangerous rough roads and carrying my belongings as I walk two to three hours climbing up and down sloppy and steep mountains and crossing rivers to the school was unthinkable, or could be deemed as unsuitable for a young woman. 

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However, being a young fresh graduate, I was filled with a sense of adventure and a willing heart to serve as a teacher. I wanted to test myself and see if I could live and teach in a place like that. Looking back on the past eight years, it has been a wonderful yet challenging experience so far. I can now confidently say, if you choose to look at the positive side of things, you will learn to enjoy and love where you are and accept the situation you are in. You will also learn to adjust your life as well and now, I always remind myself and others not to judge a place before you get to see it yourself. You don’t look at the bad road condition or hear rumors of people’s bad experiences and conclude that that place is dangerous and not suitable for a woman. You need to experience a place yourself before you can present your views on it.
Another challenge I faced was the work pressure. Okapa High School had become a secondary school when I joined the teaching staff in 2015. That was also my first year of teaching. I was assigned to teach grade 11 Language & Literature (L&L), which was my minor subject. That experience itself was very challenging for me as there were only three English teachers, myself included, so each of us were assigned to take each grade (grades 9, 10 and 11). 
The school did not have a lot of teaching materials for grade 11 at that time so I had to create handouts and teaching materials myself with what little resources I had. The school generator would only come on in the evening at 6:30pm and stop at 10:30pm in the night so I had to work around that time to complete as much as I could in preparation for the next day’s lessons. We were working both day and night: teaching 5 classes during the day and preparing lessons in the night. It was such a tiring time for such an inexperienced person like me but I am so grateful to God that I was able to manage through a lot of obstacles, and at the same time learn from my struggles and mistakes and improve myself. Every new experience at the workplace was really exciting as I got to do everything myself since there were no senior officers in the L&L Department. So on the other hand, I was teaching myself as well. 

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The school is a boarding school and on top of the teaching workload, I got to do boarding duties as well. Looking after over 1000 students in a rural school can be nerve-wrecking. Boarding duties start at 5:30 am in the morning where morning charges begin and end after doing roll checks in the dormitory at night around 9:30 to 10:00 pm. Sometimes I had to sleep throughout the weekends after boarding duties were completed just to have enough rest for the next schooling week. 
There was one time while carrying out my boarding duties that I witnessed something that changed my outlook on life forever. It was my first time to supervise the students’ dinner and it was also my first time to see how students in a rural school have their meals. I stood in the front and supervised as students came in and sat on their assigned tables, some had to stand because there were not enough tables for everyone. They gathered their plates in the middle of the benches making sure that there were no more than 13 or 15 plates. After the announcements, each student from each bench went to get a dish from the kitchen. The food was served in one dish which was then distributed to the 13 to 15 students in each bench. I nearly burst into tears up in front when I witnessed how they had their meals. Because of the rising number of students, they had only rice and a few chopped greens (cabbages) with noodles and tinned fish, but everything was mixed together so they would end up having rice only. I was so emotional I had to walk outside to regain my strength. Most of the students were obedient and respectful toward teachers, and they had this hunger inside of them to learn. I realized that this is where I am needed, it is because of them that I am here and as a public servant I have come to serve them.

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My other biggest challenge was in getting my file number in order to get paid and get registered as a teacher. For my first three years of teaching, I had to repeatedly send my documents to the Provincial Education Office (Salary office) to get me on pay. Unfortunately, I was never given an update on what was done about my documents and was always told to keep sending in copies of my documents in order to come on pay. 
As one of the eldest in my family, I have this sense of responsibility of taking care of my family, but back then I felt like I was handicapped and that I couldn’t financially support them. Sometimes I had to remain in school because there was nothing I could give to my family when I visited them in town (Goroka) and I also didn’t want to be a burden to them by visiting so I ended up not visiting at all. I am however, so grateful to the school administration for always being supportive to me and the other struggling teachers during that time. I was so blessed to be serving under a generous principal (Mr. Simeon Kibeto) who was always supportive towards his teachers.
For my first year of teaching, the school gave me a house to live in, also provided me with one double and two single mattresses since I couldn’t bring my own because of the distance. I was given food rations (fortnightly) and a small financial support from the school to assist me with my other necessities. On top of that, the school would hire a truck to transport us from the school to the town and back.  The principal was always considerate towards his teachers and reminded us to never suffer in silence. Because of his generous acts of kindness, I decided to remain and teach for six years at Okapa Secondary School even after I came on pay. 
In 2017, I was selected to represent Okapa Secondary School to travel to Port Moresby as one of the examination markers. My dad reminded me to collect my documents to give to one of my uncles who lives in Port Moresby (POM) to hopefully help put my documents through the Education Department (Salary Department) so that I could come on pay. When I came to POM, I was informed that the teachers would have a small gathering with the Education Minister and Education Secretary. I decided then to meet up with the Education Minister and address my problem to him. After the meeting, I waited with my documents until I figured it was the right time to address him. 
Unfortunately, I was informed by the MSD Assistant Director, that it would be impossible for me to talk to the Education Minister so I informed the MSD Assistant Director instead about my situation. He was sorry to hear about what I was going through and told me that he would assist me. He called my school principal and informed him to do some formal arrangements for me and told him that he would be personally responsible in getting me on pay. He assigned another officer and advised me that she would be in charge of making sure my documents go through the salary office. She took my documents, made copies and returned my originals. In term one of 2018, three years after I had commenced teaching, I received a message from her giving me my file number and informing me that I would come on pay on an exact fortnight and month. On that assigned fortnight and month, I went to town and checked my bank balance. I was so overjoyed and relieved to see that I came on pay. I am grateful for good people who are kind and considerate toward others. If it wasn’t for such people, I would have continued to be without pay for a while longer. 
To this day, I am still waiting for my teacher registration. Although I did receive my file number and have come on pay since, another challenge that still remains is my registration to certify me as a professional teacher. 
In 2020, I was so eager to receive my registration. I waited for my name to be called so that I could go in to collect my registration paper from the principal’s office but my name was not called. The other teachers came out, their faces smiling and so happy to receive their signed registration forms. I was happy for them however when I went in to receive mine, the principal couldn’t look at me. He apologised and explained that all the other papers were signed, except for mine. I was the only one in the school whose paper was not signed as a registered teacher. That day, I felt that I had just received a huge slap on my face. I thanked the principal and went out from his office. I felt so let down. How could this possibly happen me? I have been so faithful and committed to my job with or without pay. I had sacrificed all that I had to serve in a rural place for six years and, yet I was not recognised and rewarded accordingly. 
Being so confused and lost, I didn’t go to school the next day because how could I teach when I was emotionally unstable? I sat outside my house the whole day thinking up ways to find a reasonable explanation, but I couldn’t. I came to the conclusion that others must have challenges that are far worse than me and decided to set my eyes toward the coming year (2021) where hopefully, I could get my registration as a professional teacher.
It is now 2022 and I have since changed schools but I still am not a registered teacher. I love my job and I love teaching the students here at Daulo Secondary but as a teacher who has sacrificed so much just to serve students in rural places, it is a continuous cycle of praying and hoping that I will one day be recognised as a registered teacher with the PNG Department of Education.
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**Images supplied

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