By Adama Koné, Teacher Project Coordinator

Seydou O. Konaté is one of Mali Rising Foundation’s outstanding principals. He is the principal of our Cliff and Nita Bailey Middle School in the village of Beneko. Mr. Konaté is 57 years old and has 16 years experience as both a teacher and principal. Before he came to Beneko, he worked in five different schools before coming to Beneko to be the principal.  He has 11 children….so you know he is good at working with kids!

Mr. Konaté enjoys living in Beneko working with his staff — six male teachers. He has a great relationship with his community and loves to help students . Mr. Konaté likes his job very much because he loves children and it allows him to support his huge family.

Mr. Konaté is one of our principals who impresses us with their great school results and strong relationships with their partners like school committee, local educational department, and non-governmental organizations. At a recent Principal Peer Meeting, we had a chance to talk with him about his school and how he runs it so well.

In Mr Konaté’s point of view, a good principal creates a good middle school and a good middle school has good results, which makes everyone proud and joyful. To achieve this goal, he thinks a principal must make sure he builds great relationships with everyone who is involved in running the school. Thus, Seydou holds meetings with his school committee as often as possible to address or prevent school issues like student drop out or skipping classes and to strengthen or improve good actions like evening study sessions organized by the most helpful teachers. According to Mr. Konaté, his village is helpful to him in terms of providing information about students and encouraging them to work hard in school.

Mr. Konaté sees a big difference between his school and the other schools he worked with before he came to Cliff and Nita Bailey Middle School of Beneko. He feels blessed because he has great teachers and a strong community to work with. Mr. Konaté also mentioned that he is lucky and happy to collaborate with a several non-governmental organizations that have been a blessing for the school. He did not have any partner organizations at the other schools he worked in. He also said that thanks to his great teachers and great community his has been seeing wonderful exam scores when it comes to school results. All that makes him proud of his school and gives him more motivation!

Mr. Konaté reads books a lot for fun and he likes to watch movies when he is off school. His favorite food is rice with peanut butter sauce and leaves. He is from the Malinké ethnic group, and they have a great reputation for eating peanut butter sauce according to a standing joke from their joking cousins in Mali. So, as he told me this he laughed and said ”mum’s the word” about his favorite food because the people of Beneko will tease him relentlessly if the here this!