I am at my wits end with the school administration and the pointless purpose to pursue government curricula regulations. In the past three weeks of school we have finished unexpectedly early 8 times. It makes it difficult to accomplish anything when you don't know how to plan your week or your day even.
I really do feel like a WASP sometimes and my work ethic seems to defy the African spirit to take a step back and breathe. Somehow, with school resulting in the education of a disadvantaged population, I cannot reckon with the breathing. Too much breath!
In past entries, I know I've dedicated very little to what it's like being so different all of the time. I have to speak quite openly about this because it's a huge part of my experience. My mother mentioned the other day that not many Americans could probably relate to my experience here in Zululand and she's very much so correct. It's not just the color of my skin but also the culture. The white Afrikaaner population here is strictly conservative and they tend to appeal to the "Boer"/farmer mindset that so easily supported Apartheid, though to be fair, I haven't met many of them.
While initially the Zulus at school raised their brows at me in skepticism they have slowly begun to embrace me. However, we will never be one and the same such that we'll be able to relate properly. Issues of gender and religion come into play. Not to mention family and the concepts that I should be well into bearing children by now and that a good wife caters for all her husband's meals. There are much smaller things, like we eat different things. I was seen eating celery one day (which I bought at the grocery store) and everyone was curious what it was! Meanwhile, my fellow educators commonly eat loaves of white bread for lunch, sometimes with the addition of a local spicy meat dish. I cannot imagine eating a loaf of bread for lunch and how that would wrench my stomach into a knot!
Some of the new student teachers simply stare at everything I do, as though they've never been around a white person before. It's unnerving that even to do something so simple as blow my nose becomes a point of interest for someone else. One of the teachers naively asked me what time of day most white people shower. As if I would know! I told her my routine but that's the best I could offer. In a way, I respect that my peers feel comfortable enough to ask me such questions and I hope in my responses I can dispel the myth that we (whites) are all the same. Just as on the flip side, I can easily dispel the notion that all black people are the same as well. Generalizations, as a rule, require great patience though often they evoke great frustration.
....
....
Maybe some of you wonder what it's like to be gone from home so long? I think the edges get more and more blurry with each passing day of where I belong. The longer I stay here the more the foreign aspects become normal, comforting even. Some of the differences are still hard to deal with, but one learns to accept or even expect them as part of the status quo.
I've now melted from a tourist in South Africa into a volunteer, into a resident, into a citizen and now into a working-member of the country. Each way of participating allows a different perspective and provides different struggles. As a government-employed person I am more in the "norm" here than ever before and that has its certain perks. For instance, I'm a little less "special" and I don't seem like an alien from outer space for volunteering my skills to strangers. It also doesn't allow people to interpret my persona as "holier than thou." It's still odd for most white people to hear that I'm teaching in a black school (as the only white educator). However, at least now I'm in a fair trade between my skills and my employment and am doing just like the average Thando.
Being here longer does not mean life is getting easier. It's tough. Sometimes it's even tougher because I no longer have any deadlines attached to my time here. It's free, organic, open to movement and possibility. Many things could happen in an instant that would change my being here as I'm still not so attached. But, admittedly, I am attached. I'm attached to an aura that I cannot even name or put a finger on. I'm attached to being in a position that constantly makes me appreciate what I have and have had in life. It's difficult to imagine myself pulling away from such strong magnetic force.
Meanwhile my family is still overseas and my network of age-old friends. This also doesn't get any easier. The less you hear from people the more you wonder if they resent you for being away. I wonder if some family interpret my being here as "staying away." I wonder if my family and friends understand that I'm here because I'm drawn to this place rather than opposed to my homeland. Then I realize I'm making up all of these dramatic excuses because the real reason I don't hear from people anymore is because I'm so off the radar. Their silence is not personal and I have to remember that. Also, there's little I can do to rectify it.
It's now been eleven months since I was home and I do miss it every day. I am trying to live each day, one by one, with no knowledge or sight of where that will eventually lead me geographically. As a foreign citizen with no ticket home, that's the only way I can live for right now.
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
4.23.2010
3.01.2010
battle of education
By this point, after almost 20 months in South Africa, I've traveled the country more than most South Africans have. I've yet to see Mpumalanga, Limpopo, Northwest or the Northern Provinces, however I've covered a substantial territory for the other 5 provinces this country has to offer. While Cape Town provided me access to a diverse community of the mixed locals and foreigners, Pongola is much less diverse. It is host primarily to the Zulu population and, as its all-grade, "white" school of 300 pupils shows, a small Afrikaaner grouping as well.
Much like in the Free State where I first worked with the Sotho people, the Zulus love to sing. Constantly! In the staff room, the teachers will spontaneously break into song (usually Christian tunes for they're deep God-believers) and they will start to dance and egg eachother on, elbows out, hips in the air, legs in a semi-squat position. The passing student will pop in and join right in. It's amazing to watch and makes me think that Anglican worshippers might be missing the true spirit of God when I witness them in action.
Every morning school starts with a formal assembly, consisting of lines of all students grouped into grades and genders, ordered smallest to tallest from front to back. Usually one female will initiate a song and lead the rest. Every morning! The songs are amazing and vary greatly, from sombre, gentle tunes to joyful ululations of praise. It is in this that I certainly feel apart but blessed to observe this culture.
: :
Because I'm the only outsider I think most of my colleagues have known, I feel quite let in and accepted into the folds of their Zulu culture. However, there are parts for which I still remain white and provide an obvious access to other things - namely rides to town in my bakkie and even toilet paper (there is none provided at school). My whiteness may indicate a certain wealth, but they fail to look at my shoes to see that I'm the most poorly and casually clad of the lot.
Beyong my colleagues, my students seem excited to have a white teacher. To them it's a strange, unusual and rare privilege. The learners all call me Mistress and they greet me constantly at all times of the day. Not that I deserve such formality or honor! I am struggling. Phew! Struggling to understand the purpose of teaching literary techniques to students who cannot understand the difference between "across" and "around" and who fail to write succint, complet sentences. I'm struggling to assign work and then grade the 55 papers that pour in at a time (if I'm so lucky they all do their work). Mostly, I'm struggling to accept being a tight-ass teacher because that's the only way I know how to cope. Because these students are used to being smacked as a reproach, the only tool I have to save face is to show little mercy and to infuse the class with a firm work ethic. I surprise my constantly with the harsh things that run out of my mouth, "An empty slate makes for an empty mind," and "Your grades are so terrible you should go cry in the corner." Woah?! Is this really me?
I am starting to get inside the heads of my students and to understand the backgrounds from which they're coming. Each week they have journals due, 5 entries per week, and it is a massive stack of work for me to wade through. However, I'm only getting a 15% turn-in rate which is deplorable so I shouldn't complain about the little that I have to do TOO much! Most of my students have very little to say. They have long walks to school. They wash their clothes by hand every second day and help their mothers with dinner. Many do not live with their mothers or fathers, who either work in another town or have since deceased. Some students live under the care of their siblings if both parents have died. If both parents are gone, you know it's the product of AIDS. Some students reminisce about days past when they lived in more rural areas and had to walk to the river to fetch water. They see living in a place with a running tap as a significant step up in the world. Other students seem to have life a bit easier and follow a more mainstream course of life, listening to the radio all weekend long and going to church on Sundays, finding great joy in a new dress or present from a boyfriend/girlfriend. It's amazing to me how many students actually write about their relationship with God in their journals - God is deeply embedded in the culture here.
: :
My difficulties with my students make me think back to Myers Park High School's Humanities class led by Mrs. Goodloe & Mr. Leighton and the 50 bright, strong, eager students and the college-level curriculum. They were superb educators and so I wonder what they would say to me, how I should make it work with so many students, such a lacking work ethic and the void of little parental support . And then I think they would struggle to advise me because I have the load equivilent to 10 American high school classes.
I lack the resources to know how to manage my situation and find no comfort from the colleagues who suggest the only way to get work from black children is to use the rod. I feel poorly educated in what I'm trying to achieve, trying to elicit work that I barely have time to grade, trying to achieve learning in a room stifling with heat and where the students are constantly distracted by sitting 3 or even 4 to a desk on shared, broken chairs that frequently collapse and require an uncomfortable effort in balance.
I think how U.S. teachers are so endowed with resources like classroom budgets and class sets of books where each student can take them home to read. I think of the technology available and how it enables the classes to succeed because less time is devoted to rote learning and copying. Even a simple device such as an overhead projector would be a life-saver -- saving me the time from having to write on the board again and again and again as I have to move from classroom to classroom. Do these U.S. teachers know how much they take for granted?
I'm caught in a rift between these 2 sets of educators - teachers who are qualified and equipped to teach from a perspective of freedom learning in well-resourced classrooms with comfortable teacher-student ratioes AND these educators here who are unqualified but who have learned to cope with large class szies (be it effective or not). I long to meet the teacher who has seen both worlds and who can advise me in how to move forward in these difficult circumstances. I long to know more about how I can make this work in a way that is sustainable and enjoyable for all ... Ish (as all the Africans say for "yikes"), I feel a dissertation coming on!
Much like in the Free State where I first worked with the Sotho people, the Zulus love to sing. Constantly! In the staff room, the teachers will spontaneously break into song (usually Christian tunes for they're deep God-believers) and they will start to dance and egg eachother on, elbows out, hips in the air, legs in a semi-squat position. The passing student will pop in and join right in. It's amazing to watch and makes me think that Anglican worshippers might be missing the true spirit of God when I witness them in action.
Every morning school starts with a formal assembly, consisting of lines of all students grouped into grades and genders, ordered smallest to tallest from front to back. Usually one female will initiate a song and lead the rest. Every morning! The songs are amazing and vary greatly, from sombre, gentle tunes to joyful ululations of praise. It is in this that I certainly feel apart but blessed to observe this culture.
: :
Because I'm the only outsider I think most of my colleagues have known, I feel quite let in and accepted into the folds of their Zulu culture. However, there are parts for which I still remain white and provide an obvious access to other things - namely rides to town in my bakkie and even toilet paper (there is none provided at school). My whiteness may indicate a certain wealth, but they fail to look at my shoes to see that I'm the most poorly and casually clad of the lot.
Beyong my colleagues, my students seem excited to have a white teacher. To them it's a strange, unusual and rare privilege. The learners all call me Mistress and they greet me constantly at all times of the day. Not that I deserve such formality or honor! I am struggling. Phew! Struggling to understand the purpose of teaching literary techniques to students who cannot understand the difference between "across" and "around" and who fail to write succint, complet sentences. I'm struggling to assign work and then grade the 55 papers that pour in at a time (if I'm so lucky they all do their work). Mostly, I'm struggling to accept being a tight-ass teacher because that's the only way I know how to cope. Because these students are used to being smacked as a reproach, the only tool I have to save face is to show little mercy and to infuse the class with a firm work ethic. I surprise my constantly with the harsh things that run out of my mouth, "An empty slate makes for an empty mind," and "Your grades are so terrible you should go cry in the corner." Woah?! Is this really me?
I am starting to get inside the heads of my students and to understand the backgrounds from which they're coming. Each week they have journals due, 5 entries per week, and it is a massive stack of work for me to wade through. However, I'm only getting a 15% turn-in rate which is deplorable so I shouldn't complain about the little that I have to do TOO much! Most of my students have very little to say. They have long walks to school. They wash their clothes by hand every second day and help their mothers with dinner. Many do not live with their mothers or fathers, who either work in another town or have since deceased. Some students live under the care of their siblings if both parents have died. If both parents are gone, you know it's the product of AIDS. Some students reminisce about days past when they lived in more rural areas and had to walk to the river to fetch water. They see living in a place with a running tap as a significant step up in the world. Other students seem to have life a bit easier and follow a more mainstream course of life, listening to the radio all weekend long and going to church on Sundays, finding great joy in a new dress or present from a boyfriend/girlfriend. It's amazing to me how many students actually write about their relationship with God in their journals - God is deeply embedded in the culture here.
: :
My difficulties with my students make me think back to Myers Park High School's Humanities class led by Mrs. Goodloe & Mr. Leighton and the 50 bright, strong, eager students and the college-level curriculum. They were superb educators and so I wonder what they would say to me, how I should make it work with so many students, such a lacking work ethic and the void of little parental support . And then I think they would struggle to advise me because I have the load equivilent to 10 American high school classes.
I lack the resources to know how to manage my situation and find no comfort from the colleagues who suggest the only way to get work from black children is to use the rod. I feel poorly educated in what I'm trying to achieve, trying to elicit work that I barely have time to grade, trying to achieve learning in a room stifling with heat and where the students are constantly distracted by sitting 3 or even 4 to a desk on shared, broken chairs that frequently collapse and require an uncomfortable effort in balance.
I think how U.S. teachers are so endowed with resources like classroom budgets and class sets of books where each student can take them home to read. I think of the technology available and how it enables the classes to succeed because less time is devoted to rote learning and copying. Even a simple device such as an overhead projector would be a life-saver -- saving me the time from having to write on the board again and again and again as I have to move from classroom to classroom. Do these U.S. teachers know how much they take for granted?
I'm caught in a rift between these 2 sets of educators - teachers who are qualified and equipped to teach from a perspective of freedom learning in well-resourced classrooms with comfortable teacher-student ratioes AND these educators here who are unqualified but who have learned to cope with large class szies (be it effective or not). I long to meet the teacher who has seen both worlds and who can advise me in how to move forward in these difficult circumstances. I long to know more about how I can make this work in a way that is sustainable and enjoyable for all ... Ish (as all the Africans say for "yikes"), I feel a dissertation coming on!
2.03.2010
Sebenzakanzima Secondary School
I certainly thought I'd be writing Farm, Part II well before I had fodder for any other writings. Instead, I have news to share: today was my first day at my first paid job in almost 19 months! In what must be my shortest job search to date (1 week), I got an SMS on Monday from one of the local principals I was introduced to last week. I drove to the school, Sebenzakanzima, just outside of the limits of Pongola expecting to fill out the paperwork for an official job application. Instead, I was handed papers titled "Assumption of Duty." I was perplexed, not quite expecting what I was being offered, only to find out another position had opened at the school due to the death of a teacher.
And so, after filling out more paperwork yesterday and obtaining all the available English books possible, I assumed the available English teaching post for Grades 8, 9 and 10. I encountered a few of the other educators yesterday and they, too, were perplexed about me. Not being announced as a foreign volunteer come to save the day, they all assumed I was a white South African. A few made comments about how white South Africans have been fleeing overcrowding at the schools - with raised eyebrows and a glare made for cowering. However, I'm not really the white South African they think they're refering to and I'm also not fleeing.
With almost 250 names on my roster for 6 classes, it's going to be a crazy while ahead for me! I have no government curriculum to work from in a no-child-left-behind based system, so it should be interesting. I inquired today as to the discipline code at the school and, well, beating is an unofficial part of the game. So I made a strong point with my students today that I will never hit them, but that they shouldn't opt for pulling one over on me just because they think they can. In the end, my biggest threat is to send them to the principal, who will mostly likely give them a hiding or 3. It's the best I can do apart from alienating myself from the get-go and losing my new job. So, it's a bit harum scarum.
The classrooms are bare, bare, bare. The students stay with the same classroom all day long and the teachers float. Meaning the teachers all share 2 common spaces as their staff rooms. I'm sharing a desk with 2 other educators, one who kindly befriended me today. She even gave me a hamburger for lunch - it feels like school all over again! The teachers slowly started to talk to me today, but conceptually they don't seem to grasp that I'm foreign....and that I'm not living with my father on his farm nearby (a very strange rumor circulating). Everyone speaks Zulu as it is a Zulu-medium school. I don't understand a word excepting hello (sawubona) and work (sebenza), although I'm surely in the right place to start picking it up.
My work with the students went seemingly well, though there's not too much to report yet. I was so anxious yesterday, sleeping fitfully and eliciting words of comfort from Johannes. I don't know if I've ever been quite so nervous about teaching before. I think I realize that these students have never had a white educator before and was nervous that they wouldn't want to take me seriously. Luckily, they all seem to love learning English which will work fabulously to my advantage in the future!
One encouraging moment today came as the day was closing and I was invited to go to the visitation for the teacher who's place I'm filling. I gave about 8 teachers lifts in the back of the bakkie and we set out for Ncotshane (very difficult to pronounce with a click at the front of the word), the local township from where most of the students hail. The former teacher passed away Saturday, presumably from AIDS as many teachers here are dying from it. The visitations take place during the week, before the funeral which always takes place on a weekend. There is a huge ceremony involving a cow slaughter, so the weekend timing is a must.
When we arrived at the house of this teacher, all the women took off their shoes. As the women were filing in, the first teacher down on the ground, Disa, immediately started singing. The others joined in as they positioned themselves crosslegged on the straw mats. The men slowly entered as well (their shoes still on) and they joined the singing. It was incredibly beautiful and the moment's hesistation where I had not wanted to go (due to a long first day) melted instantly. Different teachers led the singing and the same ones led the group in Zulu prayers and passages from the Bible. It was a quiet house, where the sounds of the contracting tin roof made distinct clickings, along with the chorus of the roosters crowing outside. The old, old black women family members sat back, against the wall, letting the words wash over them, their eyes solemn and distant, but deeply open and watchful, their faces puckered with wrinkles from too much death and too much life.
At the end, I saddled off home after dropping the other teachers in town and carried on my long ride home. Home: where I shocked myself on a game fence yesterday and today where the warthogs greeted me through the long grasses and monkeys cried out from the trees. Not to mention the nice little poop our resident frog, Gregory, left for me right inside the doorstep. This feels like an impossibly unusual life I'm living right now. Truly African, in some ways endlessly authentic -- something I've been after with the culture for a long time. It felt good to be invited in today.
And so, after filling out more paperwork yesterday and obtaining all the available English books possible, I assumed the available English teaching post for Grades 8, 9 and 10. I encountered a few of the other educators yesterday and they, too, were perplexed about me. Not being announced as a foreign volunteer come to save the day, they all assumed I was a white South African. A few made comments about how white South Africans have been fleeing overcrowding at the schools - with raised eyebrows and a glare made for cowering. However, I'm not really the white South African they think they're refering to and I'm also not fleeing.
With almost 250 names on my roster for 6 classes, it's going to be a crazy while ahead for me! I have no government curriculum to work from in a no-child-left-behind based system, so it should be interesting. I inquired today as to the discipline code at the school and, well, beating is an unofficial part of the game. So I made a strong point with my students today that I will never hit them, but that they shouldn't opt for pulling one over on me just because they think they can. In the end, my biggest threat is to send them to the principal, who will mostly likely give them a hiding or 3. It's the best I can do apart from alienating myself from the get-go and losing my new job. So, it's a bit harum scarum.
The classrooms are bare, bare, bare. The students stay with the same classroom all day long and the teachers float. Meaning the teachers all share 2 common spaces as their staff rooms. I'm sharing a desk with 2 other educators, one who kindly befriended me today. She even gave me a hamburger for lunch - it feels like school all over again! The teachers slowly started to talk to me today, but conceptually they don't seem to grasp that I'm foreign....and that I'm not living with my father on his farm nearby (a very strange rumor circulating). Everyone speaks Zulu as it is a Zulu-medium school. I don't understand a word excepting hello (sawubona) and work (sebenza), although I'm surely in the right place to start picking it up.
My work with the students went seemingly well, though there's not too much to report yet. I was so anxious yesterday, sleeping fitfully and eliciting words of comfort from Johannes. I don't know if I've ever been quite so nervous about teaching before. I think I realize that these students have never had a white educator before and was nervous that they wouldn't want to take me seriously. Luckily, they all seem to love learning English which will work fabulously to my advantage in the future!
One encouraging moment today came as the day was closing and I was invited to go to the visitation for the teacher who's place I'm filling. I gave about 8 teachers lifts in the back of the bakkie and we set out for Ncotshane (very difficult to pronounce with a click at the front of the word), the local township from where most of the students hail. The former teacher passed away Saturday, presumably from AIDS as many teachers here are dying from it. The visitations take place during the week, before the funeral which always takes place on a weekend. There is a huge ceremony involving a cow slaughter, so the weekend timing is a must.
When we arrived at the house of this teacher, all the women took off their shoes. As the women were filing in, the first teacher down on the ground, Disa, immediately started singing. The others joined in as they positioned themselves crosslegged on the straw mats. The men slowly entered as well (their shoes still on) and they joined the singing. It was incredibly beautiful and the moment's hesistation where I had not wanted to go (due to a long first day) melted instantly. Different teachers led the singing and the same ones led the group in Zulu prayers and passages from the Bible. It was a quiet house, where the sounds of the contracting tin roof made distinct clickings, along with the chorus of the roosters crowing outside. The old, old black women family members sat back, against the wall, letting the words wash over them, their eyes solemn and distant, but deeply open and watchful, their faces puckered with wrinkles from too much death and too much life.
At the end, I saddled off home after dropping the other teachers in town and carried on my long ride home. Home: where I shocked myself on a game fence yesterday and today where the warthogs greeted me through the long grasses and monkeys cried out from the trees. Not to mention the nice little poop our resident frog, Gregory, left for me right inside the doorstep. This feels like an impossibly unusual life I'm living right now. Truly African, in some ways endlessly authentic -- something I've been after with the culture for a long time. It felt good to be invited in today.
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