Gathoni Muhia is not only a teacher of Biology/Agriculture in high school. She is the author of a book titled Redesigning your life. Thanks to Winnie she realised her dream to become an author. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Special Needs Education (Sec Option). Besides teaching, she mentors teenagers through her organisation (Teenspace Kenya), training them on self-awareness, career choice and on how to create a vision for their future.
Gathoni believes that it’s never too late to go back to the drawing board and redesign your life again, if what you have is not working for you. She also believes that no one should throw away their dreams, instead, they should cherish them because in the fullness of time, they will realise them.
Her journey to become a teacher was not outright but a result of gaining self-awareness albeit late. She recalls as a young girl while in high school, she wanted to excel in life. She immersed herself in books to get good grades despite the fact that she was in a school with limited resources. By God’s grace she managed a B- grade, the best in that school. She missed joining the university because her grade did not meet the cut-off points.
Not going to the university was not her big challenge though, but the lack of self-awareness and career guidance was. She remembers the only course she was aware of was Nursing and the only college was Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC). When her application failed to go through she was left clueless on what else to pursue.
She was later introduced to another course, Biotechnology, that was pioneering at the then Kenya Polytechnic. She joined but she had zero interest in it. She thought she would love it but for the three years she struggled.
However, it was not all bad, as it’s during that time her passion in teaching was awakened. When the lecturer asked to do a presentation of a question they were discussing, she became aware of her hidden potential. She felt so confident doing it, and a sense of fulfillment thereafter. She actually always looked forward to making such presentations.
At the time she did not think she would become a teacher, she started looking for teaching jobs in schools. After college, she struggled to get jobs aligned to the course she had studied but none came through. She did many applications but none was considered. One day, on her way in search for an internship in a certain organisation, a stranger she met after alighting a matatu, shed a light on what she was too blind to see.
His ‘Hi teacher,’ greetings were like a slap on her face, telling her to wake up and pursue the right thing. She remembers telling him that she was not a teacher but he said she looked like one. And that’s how it settled in her mind, that was the area she was to pursue in life.
And as a confirmation, she always got the jobs easily and she always found joy doing them sometimes even without pay. The challenge came later, as policies in the education centre were changing in regard to untrained teachers. She found herself being replaced so many times when a trained teacher was found. But that didn’t deter her from pursuing her passion until God opened for her a door to go to the university.
She has always felt that if she had known this earlier, she wouldn’t have wasted the 5 years pursuing the course she wasn’t passionate about. Today, she is in her third year since she got employed by the TSC and she is proud of where God has placed her. Her desire is to continue impacting the lives of the young people in this generation and to help them plan their lives well and early enough. She endeavors to shed light into the future, so that they can take calculated steps.
