5 Questions for a Teacher in Mogadishu
Aug 2, 2010
Abdinasir Mohamed Guled spends five minutes asking a teacher in Mogadishu five questions.
What is your name and where are you from?
My name is Bashir Sheikh Ali and I come from the lower Shabelle region.
What classes do you teach?
I teach 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grades at Aqon-Bile School.
Would you want your students to grow up to be teachers?
Yes indeed, I would like my students to become teachers when they grow up because they would teach many others and make our youths effective in the service of our country. But things are not like that now, the students are joining the war rather than determining their future. I am worried about that and I hope they will be thinking about learning and stay out of war.
How has teaching changed in the past year?
Teaching has became rare in the past year because most of the qualified teachers have fled the country for safer places because of the violence. Many of my colleagues were killed last year by gunmen, some of whom used to be their students, so things have now changed into anarchy and fear. That also caused teachers not to discipline their students while teaching because the student may kill you as we have some armed students in the class who are also part of the rebels.
If you could talk to a teacher in New York what would you ask him?
If I could talk to a teacher in New York I would ask him if he has ever feared that his students would kill him? You know most of the American students shoot people if they are deprived of anything, how do you detect those students since you are in a peaceful country? How long have you been teaching? What is the degree that someone needs to become a teacher in the United States?
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