“There are no accidents…” or why do I become a teacher?

The whole my conscious live I thought that I became a teacher because I failed in the Unified National Testing. So banal. However, I have never asked myself why I stayed in this profession. Why I am steel developing my qualifications? Why did I work in educational sphere? May be my professional way did not start from the UNT, but earlier?

To the most fundamental question in my life replied wise tortoise from the cartoon Kung-Fu Panda, he says, “There are no accidents”.

My mother is a teacher; she was the one of the best students in the University who had been receiving the Lenin stipend. She is hard-working and very educated person. From the beginning of my life, she brought up me very strict and elaborately cared about my education. I knew about 15 Kazakh and Russian songs, could count till 100 at age three.  Now, I can say that it is impossible, if my mum did not save audio recorder where I was singing and counting. Today, I joke naming her “tiger mother”.

Few days ago I recall that she used to say, “Diana, no specialist in the world has more power than teachers to influence people’s lives; they bear a tremendous responsibility – the future of a nation”. I remember, I started to dream to become powerful as she was. When I went to school, I tried to teach letters and numbers to my cousins, delineate the marks and words of teachers in my notebooks. I thought that red is the most beautiful and powerful color, that is why teachers use red pens. Now it seems very funny, but there was some philosophy in my childly fantasy.

In the period I studied at school, teacher’s profession impressed unvalued, low-status profession. It was middle of the 90’s when country felt many economic problems and salary of teachers was miserly, from which pupils also was suffered, because we felt their slapdash attitude toward us and our education. Only true, through and through teachers made a difference in our life, for whom my big respect from the bottom of my heart.

When I finished school, UNT was like a Judge, who identify our destiny. I do not want to describe the whole tragicalness of that day for me. Many graduators who “underperformed” considered as unlucky fellows. In order to not weight my parents I went to teachers profession, because the annually payment was little.

The first year of study at University was difficult and challenging. But I had been forgetting about everything, when I talked with the smartest and wisest girl in our faculty – Aliya Akhmetova. She studied in state scholarship and was 18 years old. She was so broad and open minded person and had never get tired to narrate me about the Space, Planets, World History, History of Kazakhstan and many other fields. She knew all khans by chronological order and names of their generation, she knew all reforms and changes that did each of them, she knew by heart all forty words of Abai and famous poems of Kazakh and foreign writers, she retold me many books. I was fan of her. I remember how she shared her dream with me:

“I have a dream. I want a very big room, where I will create quite nice and big library. I want to have many students and followers. I will teach them everything that I know. I want to make a difference in people’s life”. Eighteen years old girl, from the remote rural area had such a dream. Impressive! At that moment I wanted to do my best and study hard to have such library and followers.

The history of my work started from the National Center under the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan. It was such a “deinebriating” experience. I had many business trips to rural areas. I saw so many ungraded schools with even no water and electricity; sometimes it was so hard to find internet for several days. I saw teachers’ fireless eyes, sense of frustration… I was guilt that they were guilt because of the school condition. The first desire to change something came to me during this work place. How can I help them? Even now, I recall these schools, teachers and demotivated students with a bleeding heart… However, I was impressed by their open-heartedness and pure intentions. We have a phrase in Kazakh for such people’s soul “қаймағы бұзылмаған”.

There are so many questions without answers. How much time will be passed before all teachers will realize that “they have power to influence peoples’ lives and have a responsibility to the future of our nation”? How many open-minded youths should be born in order to “make a difference in people’s life”?  How many people will not get this bright day? Can I get this day?

Think, big desire to get this day, keep me staying in educational field and do my best in order to make my own contribution to the general development.