Content
Pre-service teacher has the highest ideals
University of the Sunshine Coast Education student Mingma Sherpa is certainly driven by the highest ideals … both in terms of her attitude towards education and the altitude at which she plans to teach.
Mingma, 23, intends to return to her native Nepal as a qualified teacher to deliver education to poor children in remote communities at elevations exceeding 3,300 metres in the Himalayas.
She said Queensland's celebration of World Teacher’s Day tomorrow (31 October) was a significant opportunity to reflect on the important role that educators play.
“It’s a great idea to celebrate teachers because I think they deserve more recognition,” she said.
Mingma, herself, is a living testament to the life-changing difference that teachers can make.
She hails from a small village called Pare, in the Solukhumbu region, that has no school. Temperatures fall to as low as 30 degrees Celsius below zero in winter.
Through good fortune, three American families who knew Mingma’s father sponsored her primary school education in Nepal’s capital city, Kathmandu.
“In Nepal, education is a privilege rather than a right. Especially for girls, education is a big thing,” she said.
“Because of poverty, a lot of people don’t have access to education. And in the remote areas, they don’t have anything.”
Mingma was later sponsored by a Coolum couple, Robyn and Peter Nolan, who brought her to the Sunshine Coast in 2002 for further schooling at Mountain Creek State High School.
She gained entry to a combined Bachelor of Education and Bachelor of Arts degree at USC in 2006, majoring in Japanese and minoring in SOSE (Studies of Society and Environment).
“I want to go back to Nepal, after gaining some work experience in Australia, and contribute to the education of children there,” she said.
“In a lot of the small towns in Solukhumbu, the people don’t have any access to education. I’d like to teach at one of the schools in Nepal that was established by Sir Edmund Hillary.”
Mingma said her desire to become a teacher has been strengthened by strong positive role models of educators in Kathmandu, at Mountain Creek High School and at the University of the Sunshine Coast.
— Terry Walsh