Rouguyatou Ly

Mrs. Ly

Mrs. Ly is our head teacher. Her real name is Rougyatou Ly and she used to be an excellent French teacher in the Seydou Nourou Tall High school of Dakar for many years, until she got nominated as the head teacher of our school two years ago. At that time the school was in a very difficult situation and most of our equipment was completely destroyed.

The worst of all was our computer lab, which was not working anymore as many computers were dead and we had no more access to the Internet. Somehow her predecessors had managed to get the Internet contract cancelled and the computer room was closed. It was as if we had been shut off from the rest of the world.

The library had become a bore, full of old books that we had read over and over. There were no more new novels in the school and we found it hard to access other public libraries in the city because most of them were distant from our school. It had become hard to believe that our school, which used to be one of the best in our capital city, visited by Hillary Clinton herself, had been turned into this pitiful place where even the blackboards were in advanced disrepair.

This situation, as we all could predict, had dreadful consequences over my fellow students’ minds and our school results. That year our results were a disaster and all the teachers were complaining about the lack of pedagogical equipment that had turned their job into a nightmare. Even photocopying had become a major problem and many parents had either taken their children away or were threatening to do so. This is the situation Mrs. Ly found when she arrived at our school.

When she arrived, many students thought that she would not be in a position to remedy the situation. Yet from the first meeting she had with the board of the student, I understood that she had a strong determination in her that permeated every word she said. And that she was ready to battle for her ideas to get the school on the right track and rid the students of their bad habits.

Abraham Lincoln

But the greatest ability of Mrs. Ly was her capacity to listen to people whatever their age. All my student friends who attended that first meeting noticed the polite way she listened to them and the great interest she attached to their ideas. She treated them as if they were adults. Such a thing had never happened before. That was when we all started believing that Mrs. Ly could improve the situation with her positive ideas.

One of her first actions was to equip the computer room with Internet access and new sets of computers. Students started coming to the computer lab again to enjoy the endless web resources. After that she equipped the staff room with new tables and chairs, Xerox machines, etc., and made it so functional that all the teachers started enjoying their job again.

I cannot help thinking that Mrs. Ly and Abraham Lincoln have some qualities in common. I wonder whether she has not been reading the fantastic story of Abraham Lincoln to get inspired by the 16th President of the United States. In fact, one of Mrs. Ly’s best qualities is her ability to listen to people who have different opinions and take each one’s opinion into consideration to find a final solution that will be acceptable for all parties involved. This she must have learnt from Abraham Lincoln.

I think that another one of her qualities is her ability to learn on the job and improve her management of the school. She admitted, herself, that when she started in her new position as head teacher she had no idea how to manage a school and teachers with different personalities. Yet two years later, nearly all the staff and students alike readily admitted that she is an excellent leader with rare skills to bring people to work together and get the job done.

Despite her great success in our school, Mrs. Ly is always ready to admit her fault or share the blame, just like President Lincoln, when she orders something and then it goes wrong. She will always say, “Alright, alright that’s my fault. Don’t blame him, he only did what I told him to do.”

Another thing that she does is to appoint people according to their competencies. She never selects anyone because she likes him or her. She always says that the job comes before personal relationships. She said that people did not like that at first. But later on they understood that this was the only way to success.