About Rungano
Hometown: Harare, Zimbabwe
Degree: B.S., Bennett College
Rungano Nyajeka is a Master of Arts in Teaching candidate. Her passion is serving students and families in science education and post-secondary success. She is a Bennett College chapter member of Beta Kappa Chi National Honor Society. Her research focus is in sustaining learning partnerships with family and community involvement that positively impacts student achievement and learning outcomes.
Why did I decide to teach?
Dr. Johnetta Cole’s advice to teacher leaders guides my work. “The content of the curriculum should never exclude the realities of the very students who must intellectually wrestle with it. When students study all worlds except their own, they are miseducated.” Living and learning in Durham as a Teach House Fellow gives me the opportunity to be an active member of the Durham community and learn from its rich history and culture. I look forward to many visits to the local museums, art galleries, and Sarah P. Duke Gardens.
What are you passionate about in education?
As a teacher leader, there are three tenets centered in culturally responsive teaching that are my guiding principles. Academic success, cultural competence and critical consciousness are essential in sustaining a culturally sensitive learning environment (Ladson Billings, 1994). Via learning encounters that are culturally relevant, I commit to support and facilitate the application of science education in alignment with school, district and state mandated guidelines.
My 'why' as an educator can be expressed as to be the change that I want to see. Research shows that schools play a major social factor that influences how children understand themselves personally and in relation to their world around them. Therefore, I am determined to develop culturally competent practices as a fellow that are aligned to designing and instructing content in ways centered in meaningful student and teacher relationships.
In solidarity with my colleagues as community leaders that teach underserved students and families, I aim to raise my awareness of the role teachers can play in transforming historically marginalized communities to college-going and career-ready cultures from within the classroom.
When observing my struggles in school growing up as an immigrant girl in Chicago during the '90s, my South African-born grandmother shared an impactful proverb to show me the importance of appreciating education as a family value. Mbuyah (grandmother in Shona) constantly encouraged all of her granddaughters to embrace rigorous subjects in math and science as a tool in forging a career path to professional success. Whenever she would notice any of her granddaughters express any feeling of doubt she would read body language well enough to get one alone and say, in a blend of English and Shona, a common saying; “Don’t you know? Everyone knows, send a boy to school, you educate a man; but send a girl to school, you educate a village” and, despite the obstacle any of us would be facing at the time, these inspiring words were an affirmation of her belief in every one of our academic endeavors.
Newspaper Article
https://newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/2014236904/1999-03-19/ed-1/seq-2…