Generation Reader: A teacher’s story

My name is Cynthia Zikhali. I’m 58 years old now and I’ve been teaching English language and literature for over 30 years.  

I am from a very large family. We were 10 siblings, five girls and five boys. I was the only one to go to boarding school and it was an honour to be given that. After I completed my A levels, when my father saw that I had passed with good results he took my results to Hillside Teachers College and told me, next week you’ll be going to college. I’m grateful for him because he saw potential in me and I used that to my advantage. 

This is a big school with 1,181 students. It’s really a challenge. Our classes are quite large and at times you find that we don’t even have enough resources to teach these students, particularly in the department that I’ve been in. You need students to read on their own, to read and try to answer questions, but at times you don’t get the chance to do that because we don’t have enough books in the school.  

The school is trying, the SDC is trying, but the numbers are also growing. Then there comes the issue of books getting torn, books getting lost. I think that that has been our main undoing for the school. Our greatest challenge is the reading space for learners. Our library is small and with 1,181 students we really need a large library. We need books for the library.

If you can talk about reading and enforce upon our learners to read, read, read, I think we’ll have a better generation of readers than we have now. 

We have received some books from Book Aid International. We received some last year, we received a few more this year and the books are quite relevant. Access to these kinds of books has really improved my teaching and it has improved the pass rate of my learners. For the past two years, since I’ve had these books, I’ve had very good passes. 

My aim all the time when I get a group of kids is to help them pass. And the more books I have, the better the result is going to be. So having these books really has really been a blessing – because I know that it will change things in the classroom. 

I say start reading because the more we read the more we free our minds. We get to learn about other people, get to learn a lot of things through books. So, if someone hasn’t been reading, honestly, all I can tell them is start reading. 

Reading spaces are very crucial for learners and everyone to start reading. If there’s no reading space, you can forgive communities for not reading because there’s nothing to read. So at the end of the day, most of the members of the community find themselves doing something else instead of reading. So if Book Aid International could equip new reading spaces and train teachers and librarians to support reading, I know it will change a lot of people’s reading capabilities.

Books are important. If our learners get hold of the book, get the feel of the book, it will make better sense for them to keep reading. If I bring a book to class and read for them, we don’t know what’s happening in their heads.  I might be reading and they are thinking about something else, but if they have the book, they can read in class, they can read it wherever they wish to read, they can just get hold of the book and read. 

Images ©BookAidInternational/KB Mpofu