The Treasure Walking Among Us: A Tribute to My Mother, the 3Rs Teacher

Some people have a job. Some have a career. And then there are people who somehow turn their profession into a lifetime mission.

She has spent many years in the classroom teaching the 3Rs — Reading, Writing and Arithmetic,the three little things that are not actually little at all. Before children can become doctors, engineers, teachers, entrepreneurs, lawyers, leaders or anything else they dream of becoming, somebody has to first teach them how to read, write and count.

And the work my mother has spent so many years doing matters now, more than ever. The simple skills she taught – reading, writing and arithmetic remain a major challenge for millions of children, not only in Tanzania but across Africa. Tanzania’s latest national 3Rs assessment found that while 78.9% of Standard Two pupils demonstrated average to very good performance in reading, the figures fell to 69.6% in writing and 62.6% in arithmetic, with wide differences between regions: overall 3Rs performance ranged from 83.2% in Dar es Salaam to just 36.9% in Kigoma. The challenge is even more profound across Sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly nine in ten children are estimated to be unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10. Behind these numbers are millions of children who are attending school but are not acquiring the foundational skills they need to learn, progress and thrive. And this is precisely why teachers like my mother matter: they are not simply teaching subjects; they are building the foundations upon which a child’s entire educational journey depends.

My mother has been one of those somebodies.

And she has been doing it for a very long time, passionately, I personally admired her as my teacher.

If you grew up with a teacher as your mother, you will understand that retirement from the classroom does not necessarily mean retirement from teaching! The teacher simply changes classrooms.

At home, you might casually pronounce a word incorrectly and suddenly find yourself receiving a mini-English lesson you never requested. You might make a questionable calculation and discover that your mother has already mentally audited your mathematics. And if you ever thought you could escape homework after leaving school, you quickly discover that your mother has a lifetime supply of assignments!

But behind the jokes is something genuinely remarkable.

My mother has spent years helping children master the very foundations of learning. She has watched children struggle with letters and numbers, patiently guided them through mistakes, celebrated small breakthroughs and encouraged them to try again.

And I suspect she has said “Try again” more times in her lifetime than most of us have said “good morning.”

That is the quiet power of a great teacher.

A teacher may teach a child to read at six years old and never know what that child eventually becomes at 26, 36 or 46. The child may become a business owner, nurse, farmer, journalist, engineer, parent, community leader or another teacher.

But somewhere in that person’s journey is the foundation laid by someone who patiently taught them their first words, their first numbers and their first attempts at writing.

That is why I think we need to start looking differently at teachers who have spent decades in classrooms.

There is a treasure hidden in people like my mother.

And I don’t mean treasure in the financial sense.

It is the treasure of experience, practical knowledge, wisdom, stories, teaching techniques and an intimate understanding of how children actually learn.

Education systems spend considerable time developing policies, curricula, manuals and training programmes. All of these matter. But there is another source of knowledge that can sometimes be overlooked: the teacher who has spent 20, 30 or more years standing in front of real children, in real classrooms, dealing with real challenges.

Imagine if experienced teachers were given opportunities to mentor younger teachers, document their classroom practices, contribute to teacher training, share what worked and what did not, and tell the stories behind the statistics we so often discuss in education meetings.

Imagine a Teacher Legacy Programme where long-serving teachers become mentors and knowledge custodians for the next generation.

Imagine recording their stories before they disappear.

“After all these years in the classroom, what do you know now that you wish you had known when you started?”

I suspect the answers would fill more than a few training manuals.

And perhaps this is one of the lessons my mother has unintentionally taught me: sometimes the greatest expertise in an education system is not sitting in a report. It is sitting in a person.

So, Mum, today I celebrate you – while you are very much here, very much alive, and hopefully still ready to correct our grammar!

I celebrate the many years you have given to teaching, even as you continue to endure the pain of troubled knees and the long journey of recovery after several operations that, sadly, have not yet brought you the healing you deserve.

I celebrate the children whose lives you have touched, including myself.

I celebrate your patience, your persistence and your commitment to those three deceptively simple letters: 3Rs.

And I celebrate something even bigger: the possibility that the experience you have accumulated over the years can continue to benefit many more teachers and learners.

Because perhaps your greatest contribution to education is not finished, as I always say you still have the energy.

Maybe the next chapter is about passing the treasure on.

And knowing my mother, she will probably insist that before we start discussing all these big ideas, we first make sure everyone can read, write and count properly.

After all, some things never go out of style.

Happy Teacher’s Day, Mum. You taught the 3Rs – but you have spent a lifetime teaching much more than that.

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