Edupreneur by Aaron Tait & Dave Faulkner

Author:Aaron Tait & Dave Faulkner
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780730329237
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2016-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

The school of hard knocks

You might remember that earlier on we mentioned that Aaron received ‘a handful of pretty serious death threats' when he was running a school in Tanzania.

What might surprise you is that these death threats didn't come from local gangsters or religious extremists.

They came from kids in the school. The very kids he was working so hard for.

One afternoon, when they had been at the school for six months, Aaron was marking some papers in his little shack in the slum. One of the teachers, who we will call Anthony, walked past (he was the only one left actually, as the others had been fired or had decided to leave). Aaron asked Anthony to pop in and share a cup of tea, hoping to inspire him with a little pep talk. He was a brilliant teacher — a local guy who had grown up tough but had made it through school and wanted to help the next generation. All of the teachers had been doing it tough, trying to teach 200 kids, with almost no budget, living among crime and hardship, and constantly trying to overcome new bouts of malaria.

As Aaron made a tea for Anthony, he started to talk.

‘You have been amazing, my friend, and I feel like we are really making progress here', Aaron said as he lit the small gas stove to boil some water. ‘I know things are tough, but I feel like if we can just push that little bit harder this month, the kids will see the progress they are making and we will be on track to getting a load of them through their exams'.

‘Aaron, you need to take a break', Anthony said, slumping into a chair.

‘I didn't come to this place to take breaks', Aaron said, without turning around, putting a teabag into each mug and spoonfuls of sugar into Anthony's tea. ‘I came here to work with awesome people like you, man, and to make a difference for these kids.'

‘No, Aaron, honestly,' he said. ‘You need to get away.'

Aaron turned around and smiled. ‘Anthony, we can do this. We are going to get ten of these kids through these exams this year and prove to the whole community that this school changes lives.'

Anthony put up his hand to interrupt.

‘Aaron, you are not listening. You must get away.' Fear was etched on his face. Then he looked down. ‘I overheard some of the boys talking about you at break.'

‘Cool — what are they saying?' Aaron asked. ‘Let's fix it and move on.'

‘Aaron, it's really bad,' Anthony responded. ‘In a few hours the boys are going to come to your house and, in front of Kaitlin, they are going to kill you.'

This stopped Aaron in his tracks. This was real, very real, and this was not the kind of place where the police could come to the rescue or a counsellor could be called in from head office. There were no protocols here for something like this.

Remember that quote from

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