July 30 - School Visit

Today we met with Geraldine Goldblatt, the local director for this region of the Cape's educational curriculum. She organized school tours for us at four different schools, each one giving a different perspective of education in SA. I went to Oude Molen, the Old Mill, which is a technical high school that specializes in engineering. There were very few girls at the school and most of the students were Cape Coloured. The principal said there were problems with white flight because the school was originally established as a white technical school, one that taught shop and wood working skills, but since the end of apartheid the white population has been steadily decreasing.

The principal met us with tea in the boardroom and a 20-30 minute introduction about the school. He was very proud of his relationship with an area insurance agency that has increased the funding for astro turf on their sports field as well as providing for a club house that can be used by the school and the community. He said that his school accepts 18o students out of the 400-500 applicants every year. Students pay over R8,000 to go to school, about $1,200 per year, plus have to buy uniforms and supplies. According to him, they haven't had to turn down a student because of lack of fees and have programs that help support those who can't pay, but there are still only a limited number of spaces. He also had some interesting things to say about education, saying that American schools suck, and we only do well because we give green cards and Asians and Indians come to our universities, such as MIT, to study. It's an interesting perspective. I know that our education system is not perfect, but I don’t think that our foreign students are the only students who can achieve in our system. Those of you who know me can assume that as difficult as it was, I bit my tongue.

I sat in on two lessons. In the first class, Brigitt, a very kind English department head had about 30 11 grade students. What struck me the most is how much her students were just like mine. They had been working on an argumentative essay, and she was intending to collect it and go over it, but of course, since she'd been gone three days with the flu most didn't have it done. So, she did what all good teachers do, adjusted. She pulled out a poetry project she had been preparing. In the project guidelines, 3-4 students were asked to create a power point or poster presentation that explicated a poem. They were instructed to provide background, teach the poem to the class and lead discussion on it, then have a quiz about it. She originally presented it as a single student project, but because the directions (not rewritten) said group work, it didn't take the boys long to cajole her into making it a group project, but she gave the same dire warnings I always give, that one or two students shouldn't end up doing the majority of the work. She told them to come up with a plan of responsibilities by next Monday. I asked her if the students had access to a computer lab to do the power point, but she said that although there was a computer lab it was used mostly by the math department and hard to use. Oh, and she had a smart board, by the way! She used it too. I didn't get a chance to ask her about how much training she had on it. Near the end of the lessons, one of the boys showed me a drawing he had made of a boy holding a flag and a joint. He asked me what the boy was holding. I thought about what the appropriate answer would be, but I decided on the truth. I said, “I know what it is in English, or what we call it.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Well we call it a joint, maybe it’s a blunt, but I think you call it dagga,” I said. He laughed and took the picture back, elbowing his friends and laughing. I was just getting to talk to them a little, including September (the boy right in front of me who immediately introduced himself when he came in the room), but the bell rang and they had to go to a different class. Bridgitt mentioned that September was usually really shy and they were much more rambunctious because I was in the room, and they were showing off for me a little.

Before I left Bridgitt, she told me she would be at a training all next week and her students would be shared among her fellow English faculty. They do not have a substitute system. She also mentioned that while the government would give the school some money to provide coverage for her, she did not think that the money would be used to compensate those teachers watching her students.

In the second classroom, I watched Sandy Hendricks, a bright young teacher do a poetry lesson. The student I sat next to took copious notes on her PowerPoint analyzing the poem. However, they were all in his notebook, despite her encouragement to annotate on the handout she had provided. They read and analyzed a poem, The Watchman by a South African poet. She also gave me several copies of other poems by South African poets. I thought I might send her the acronym SOAPStone to help her organize her literary analysis; she guided them through analysis of sensory imagery, author intention, attitude of the author, and tone. Mostly it was with a few specific questions and then a teacher provided answer, but I can see how that could be a fundamental support for later independent analysis. I didn’t agree with all of her analysis completely, but I appreciated the chance to see how she explained her analysis to the students and guided them through their questions.

Her 9th grade students were obviously well managed. They came in just a little noisy and Sandy marched them right back out to do it again. The last few minutes of class, Sandy asked me if I’d like to address the students and after a brief introduction about me and what I was doing in South Africa, I asked them what they would like my students to know about them. I thought their answers were perfect. They said, wild animals don’t walk down the street here, you should be careful when you visit Capetown, and that I should tell my students how diverse they are in South Africa. I thought those were all very astute comments. They also asked me what my students knew about South Africa, and I said that before they came to me, most may know some geography, they may know Nelson Mandela, but beyond that there was very little. They asked me about American violence. I told them I didn’t know anyone who was a victim of violence in my circle of friends, but that there were very loose gun regulations. One student asked me if I owned a gun, and I said no. He looked disappointed. In addition, they asked about gangs and many other questions about American culture. They are great Eminem fans.

The other members of the group went to Siyabuela, a township middle school; Pinelands, a former model C school (advantaged); and Thandokhoulu, a school that specializes in math and science. Some of their comments included:

Thandokhoulu was an abandoned elementary school that was abandoned because of lead in the building and the Kaylisha township came to take it in 1992 to use as a squatter school. The police seized the school and tried to defend it from the township residents and didn’t want to permit them to use it. There were gaping holes in the school floors. 90-95% of the senior students are sexually active. The school principal never met them or addressed them and at least in one class the teacher never showed up and my colleagues taught the class by leading a discussion about economics. The six teachers who went here left early because no one seemed to direct them, but the met with a Canadian college student who was doing her student teaching here. She did 6 months at two different schools and will be qualified to teach in SA or Canada when she finishes. At Pinelands my friends were shown the school by the graphing and cad teacher. They attended an all school assembly where 800 students sat on the floor quietly. The counselor at the school, Judith Barren, is working on an integration and renovation campaign for the students called Rainbow camp, which is suppose to build student morale and teaming. One activity they do is blind-fold a pair of students and direct them not to speak. Then, they have to make something out of clay. Barren tells a story about two students who had been “enemies” since grade school who take off the blind folds and see that they created beauty. She says the kids experience a lot of emotional change because of the camp, but they only take a select group of students because of funds.

A fun fact from Tommy about Xhosa: Tommy noticed that the literal translation of the Xhosa greeting is, “I see you.” It’s an acknowledgment of them as a person, regardless of social status. To my colleagues and Barren it is this “seeing” of the other that makes the school work better. In the Langa township school, Siyabulela, my friends observed a language lesson in Xhosa and then in Afrikaans and English. The teacher did the lesson in all three languages to work on language development. Classes were large, 44 kids, tables and chairs. It was an eye opening experience in the township school. They came back with many pictures and stories about the difficult conditions and teachers who simply just didn’t show up to teach their classes.