1st Day of School!!

Today was the first day of school! It was Ayoba (Zulu for “great!”). here are my thought sand ruminations of the day:

We met in the barn for introductions. It was freezing. Maybe about 35 degrees F. I gave my jacket to a kid with no jacket…it got colder. We were introduced by Thandanani, Partson, and Spoganoliso (3 of my favorites already). The name Thandanani means “love everyone.” We got raving applause…rock star style! Yelling, hollering, whistling, spotlights, and the song “Here I go again on my own,” started blaring when they called our names….none of that actually happened….just applause.

I am co-teaching in a 10^th grade math class with a Tumelo who is in his first year of teaching (I’ll also be stepping in for 11^th and 12^th grade math at times, but grade 10 is my focus for now). He came from a corporate background for two years then joined an organization called Teach South Africa. It is a program put together by the universities to get South Africans teaching South Africans. I think it’s an amazing program if run well. It will be interesting to see how open he is to new methods of teaching. He has been teaching since January (the beginning of their year.) He has been teaching very dry and traditionally (his words exactly) and is open to new methods of teaching. His big first step was to put them in groups. He put them into homogeneous ability level groups. Not the best method but it works sometimes. Yesterday he told me that he wanted to tell the kids why they are in each group and I really pushed back on that. If you tell a group of students they are the dumb group, they will perform it that way and not challenge themselves. Nevertheless, they all know each other fairly well and they’ll be able to tell this on their own. I held my breath this morning, but all he said was the positives of group work.

We pitched a simple project that I came up with several years ago about equations that reaches all ability levels and end up with beautiful art work on the walls (which is really lacking around the school). The kids seem pumped about the project and Tumelo seems excited about the project. I get to fully take over the class this week and model good teaching strategies (yup, I am indeed brushing off my shoulders right now). He will be popping in and out main instructor to teach new topics, but I will be modeling transfer of information, not simply telling of information which it seems that is what he is doing. If I can leave here turning one teacher into an amazing teacher I feel that my summer will have been well worth it. I am truly excited to work with someone hungry for new methods. I am also excited to learn from him too. He is brilliant in math (although he explained something wrong today), so maybe not brilliant, but Ayoba. He has a statistics background which will really help in a lot of things math related.

Finally I stepped into a Life Orientation (L.O.) class. This is almost a therapy session for the kids 4 days a week. I think it is what our advisory is supposed to be like but is not. It started by a breathing session led by a student then on to discussions and confrontations. Kids were pretty open and honest about thoughts and feelings and confronting them. May kids shared fun and exciting things they experienced over break like church camp, visiting family in other townships, etc. One girl came out and said she had a miserable time during break. Her mother ran away and she was left alone with the dad and brother. She was stuck cooking and cleaning for them during her entire vacation. She kept commenting on how lonely she was. A boy sitting next to her hugged her and tried to comfort her by telling her, “we are here for you all the time.” It was a beautiful moment. I don’t know why I cannot foster an advisory like this. Thabia and Trevor, the L.O. teachers said I will be able to interview them about this class and what is the magic they have that I want. I will definitely be attending these LO classes daily, not only to get to know the kids better, but for a therapy session for me. More to come here too.