About 80 per cent of the pupils whom Thea Uwimbabazi teaches in Rwanda are orphans. Half the country's teachers were among the two million Rwandans who lost their lives in the genocide of recent years. "How can you expect children who have lost their relatives to share a classroom peacefully with pupils whose parents took part in the genocide and in some cases actually killed their families," she asks.

Of the 12 women teachers in her school, seven are widows whose husbands and children were murdered by the Hutu militia. "How can you expect these widows to have a sense of duty and deliver worthwhile lessons? They're in a state of shock," says Uwimbabazi.

The children who are orphaned suffer from trauma and an immense sense of loss. To help them cope, the teachers try to organise group recreation so that the pupils can play together and get rid of their deep inner suspicions. But, says Uwimbabazi, they need specialists to help them in this kind of work.

The war wrecked many of Rwanda's schools. In Uwimbabazi's classroom the roof is full of bullet holes and she has to stop teaching when it rains. Despite these huge problems, she is "100 per cent happy as a teacher because education is the foundation of every occupation. All politicians have been to school, and all scientists, artists and technicians have been able to do what they have done thanks to the basic education they received."

A Continent away Tserendozhiin Urtnasan teaches in Ulaanbataar, the Mongolian capital. There is a strong Mongolian tradition that the head of the household must provide for his family, but he finds his "pittance" of a salary is not enough even to pay rent and electricity. He and his family must live with his in-laws.

"Male primary school teachers who are heads of families are as rare as stars in daytime," he says. The status of the profession is so low that he is ashamed to be called a teacher in public.

When he takes his class out, he instructs them: "Children! When you get on the bus, there's no need to shout out to me bagsha (teacher), do you understand? The bus is crowded; there are no empty seats. Teacher and pupils stand. Suddenly, the pupils shout out: "Bagsha! There's a seat here for you."

The decline in status, says Urtnasan, is partly due to the number of unqualified teachers, more than 2,000 of them. Mongolia's education system is struggling to keep up with the shift from a centralised to an open market economy. Often his children do not understand his lessons, given that they have to learn two alphabets, Cyrillic and Mongolian.

The best he can do in these uncertain times is to communicate the values he considers important. "If you don't learn anything else, at least learn to be good," he tells his pupils. "There is not need for all of us to become scholars, but we should all be considerate."

The problems which Elizabeth Gonzalez faces teaching six-yearolds in the Bronx, New York's poorest area, are different. In this unsafe area she must never stay in school after 5 pm, when the guard goes home.

"Many colleagues don't even walk out on the street," she says. "They go from the parking to the school building and some even lock the classroom doors." However Gonzalez, a Mexican-American who says she became a teacher "to give something back," finds teaching here hard but infinitely more rewarding than in a more affluent school.

A major part of her work is teaching the children values usually learnt at home. The fights and outbursts of anger of her six-year-olds constantly surprise her.

"What I want to do is teach but if a child disrupts the class, I have to stop and make the peace. I insist they respect each other."

A favourite lesson is cookery. "Once a day we cook and share out what we have prepared. Some children get angry because they haven't been given the best portion, so we discuss how to take turns."

Lorna Davids is the cofounder of a Steiner school in Alexandra, a polluted, crowded and dangerous slum area in the centre of Johannesburg's richest white neighbourhood. The legacy of South Africa's years of apartheid - poverty, unemployment and 70 per cent illiteracy - contributes to making Alexandra a breeding ground for child abuse, car hijacking and smuggling drugs and arms. It's known for its armed battles between sympathisers of Inkatha and the ANC. There is no electricity, sewage disposal or running water.

The shacks and rubble which surround Davids' school provide many a learning opportunity. "While teaching nouns and adjectives to my hyperactive nine-year-olds, they looked out the window and saw a lady relieving herself under the shade of a tree. Suddenly one of them, Tshepiso, yelled out, `Lorna, come and see the big black bum!'. I didn't know how to react so I politely continued the lesson based on what they saw: bum was a noun and big and black were adjectives! After that the pupils never forgot what nouns and adjectives were."