There are many divisions in our staffroom today, otherwise called “staffroom schisms “These are either silent or loud disagreements which stem from personal to professional conflicts.
The language that has to be spoken should be nothing but either English or Kiswahili, in other instances French, Arabic or any language that is generally understood by all people.
In some staffroom, divisions and bullying is done by a section of members of the same ethnic community by communicating in their native ethnic language, the main reason is to give specific information to particular members and exclude others.
“What do you think develops in the mind of a member who can’t understand the conversation because finally whoever is communicating in vernacular and the tribesmen suddenly burst into laughter?”
There is another complexity in our staffroom that is called micro- aggression, this is a very common one that tears the staffroom apart, in this one, and there are statements of discrimination against members of marginalized groups. It focuses on appearance, body shape, gender, among other issues.
Why should we demean people from a particular tribe? Why should we imagine that we are superior? Holier-than-thou?
We should not forget that we are equal before God and as such we all play a complementary role.
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In some of our staffrooms, focus on trivialities to dismiss other people’s competencies which is called micro- invalidation. A diploma, degree or PhD held by a person from Turkana ethnic is as good and valid just like a Kikuyu and any other tribe would.
There are verbal or non-verbal behavior and uncalled for sentiments that demean other ethnic communities. This is still very wrong. Other people do feel that they can only be managed by professors or teachers from their community.
The moment a teacher from another community manages them, they volley and magnify so many forms of accusations against them but when one of their own manages and messes, that’s not wrong at all.
Let’s make our staffrooms platforms where we can address and correct the rot in our society but not the breeding ground of disharmony.
There are staffrooms that could have various races, some of these staffrooms experience racism which is an emotional reaction to members of a different race that could lead to violence, harassment and even humiliation of desperate and unsuspecting staff members, teachers here suffer in silence not knowing where to take their grievances because if they are seen complaining, they could easily be shown the door.
In such institutions, teachers work under fear and staffrooms are a resemblance of a torture and mourning area void of any meaningful engagement.
A number of our staffrooms are even areas where we are taught by foreigners, a good example is in junior school where some foreign languages are taught by foreigners, these languages include German, French, Mandarin, Arabic and others. Some staffrooms discriminate against these teachers because they appear strange or foreign, this is what is referred to as Xenophobia.
Any teacher at any level from any country designated by either the government or company should not be discriminated against.
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A few teachers do believe that they are the best thereby discrediting the teaching methods of others. This results in a lot of divisions in the staff over which is the best method of presentation.
There is normally a private discussion that develops a division between the haves and have-nots of the staffrooms. This happens under the carpet but it’s so much available, there is the division between the very fortunate and less fortunate members of the staff.
The pedagogic approaches have also played a very critical role as far as staff division is concerned. This is the general approaches of teaching which at times differs from individual to individual.
Highly religious staff members do imagine that all other members are so sinful and as such create their own staffroom in the general staffroom. This helps to heighten schisms between staff members.
All in all, it’s the collective role of all staff members to create harmony and eradicate any boundaries so that real faith can be restored to all of our staffrooms
By Hillary Muhalya
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