Third Grade Teacher

Last month I reunited with a teacher that played a big role in my life, my 3rd grade teacher, Monsieur Alibaba Kabwe aka Alimasi. When we started the school year, he divided our class into three rows: goats, tigers and lions. We all start in the goat row, we had to earn promotions from goat to the tiger or lion row.

The teacher would ask a question in class and if the question was hard and one or two students get it right then they would be moved from the goats row to the lions row, if the question asked was not too hard and one or two students get it they would be moved to the tigers row.

Being shifted from goats to tigers or lions wouldn’t mean that you stayed there forever, just like you worked your way there you had to keep working hard to stay there. You could go from lions to tigers or goats if your performance in class deteriorated, so you had to keep working hard.

He also came up with an idea of making sure our French is perfect by making few laminated pink cards. If you were caught speaking in your mother tongue you would get that little pink card. We were taught in French but would speak our mother tongue at home, the teacher didn’t want us to have hard time understanding some of the stuff in class due to a lack of not speaking enough French while at school. We would snitch on each other at times, we knew in class we were not allowed to speak anything but French so a lot of students would get caught speaking Swahili or Kirundi during the break time and they would end up with the little pink card (jetons) and they would get in trouble, so the goal was to not end up with that card all day long.

It was a whole other level of motivation, we used to compete, working hard to be on top. I remember competing with another student called Mohamed Seif, we started on the goats row together and went straight to the lions row the very same day. As soon as we hit that row competition mode activated. It went from just me and him to a bunch of us working hard not to fall back to tigers or goats, there was no way we wanted to go back to the goats, so we worked extremely hard to keep our spots.  The group of kids who were super competitive included: Christine Lubinda, she was my best friend then and still is very close to me up to this day, she is now a successful nurse, Claude Mpozenzi, I am still in touch with him too, a big musician now,  Mohamed Seif, a big nerd and brilliant in IT, I am still in touch with him too, Furaha Mbala a lawyer now and I still talk to her every now and then.

I still talk to a lot of people that were also in that 3rd grade class, and we all talk about how great and educational our 3rd grade was, we all felt like we learned a lot that year.  

Now years after, I can look back at all the students that were together in 3rd grade and if a bunch of us turned out great it’s because of that man. I used to think I am the only one grateful for that teacher until I talked to others from the class and realized we are all who we are because of how our 3rd teacher taught us. When I talked to Monsieur Alibaba last month I thanked him so much and he said no need because the way we all turned out is the best way to thank him because all he wanted was to see us succeed.

I will forever be grateful to that man.