A "Family" View of the School Community

The more time we spend at A.V. Bukani, the more we become part of the fabric of the school and the community. Children call out to us across the school yard with phrases from the books we’ve read in their classrooms or songs we’ve sung with them.  Mothers welcome us as Nosango and Tando, names they gave us in 2009.  Teachers enjoy photos of Sara’s children, remembering that on her last visit here in 2010, she was pregnant with her older child Maxine. We wear the traditional dress that was given to us in 2008 on formal occasions like the farewell for Randi and Steve, and the teachers and families hug us and want to take pictures with us. We are part of them, and they are part of us.

But just as we see the wonderful aspects of life here, we also see the challenges more clearly because we are no longer treated as guests, but as family.  Life is hard here. We are reminded on a daily basis, on an hourly basis, just how easy life is for a white middle-class person in the U.S.  Our life here is certainly different than home, but still…

Muddy streets from overbearing, cold rain--

For us: We scrape mud off our shoes and put on dry ones.

For them: Children in shoes a size too small, with no socks, and threadbare clothes shiver or don’t come to school at all.

Municipal water that is unreliable--

For us: We drink from the bottled water we always carry.

For them: An hour, a day, a week with no clean water for all your needs.

Illness and death--

For us: We mourn the teacher friend that we lost.

For them: Weekends are filled with funerals for family, friends and colleagues of every age. This week, one teacher lost two young cousins from illness, another lost a sister-in-law from an accident slipping in the mud, and the mother of the president of the SGB (a parent board with governing rights in the school) died on Thursday. That’s just the ones we know about.

Eye glasses-

For us: A postponed eye exam because of our time here.

For them: A school of 1000 learners with only a handful wearing glasses. Others squint at the board or put their faces ½ inch from the page of the book. How much could they be learning if they could see the words?

While on our first trip to South Africa, on a 2006 tour with multi-cultural educators, we heard great optimism about the “new South Africa.” Today, there is tremendous frustration with the lack of services provided by the government. Fraud and embezzlement at every level are rampant, starting with the president Jacob Zuma, whom a watchdog group found used nearly $18,000,000 of taxpayers' money to turn his private home into a display of "opulence on a grand scale." He just took on his 5th wife, which appalls people of every culture we spoke with.

Yet Zuma is with the ANC – the African National Congress – the party of Nelson Mandela. And the majority feel they cannot leave that party or they will dishonor Mandela’s legacy.  But they don’t know how their children will feel when it is their turn to vote…

There is a consistent disappointment in the services provided through the Ministry of Basic Education. The Minister Angie Motshekga has admitted the problems herself, issuing an open letter apologizing to grade 12 pupils in 2012. She wrote: "I know 2012 has not been an easy year for you. I also understand that you may feel I ... have let you down. I apologise unreservedly for all you have been through as a pupil." Not much has changed. Just a few days ago, Motshekga stated at a public forum, “Things are quite bad, I’m sorry to say.”

American-born filmmaker Molly Blank, who now creates compelling documentaries about South African education wrote that Motshekga’s apology “devastated me, not because of what she said but because of the fact that the government's neglect of pupils compelled her to say it.”

But Molly went on to document high schools that work, despite the odds of incredible poverty and few resources https://vimeo.com/schoolsthatwork .  Her book and videos, ‘How to Fix South Africa’s Schools: Lessons from Schools that Work” (http://bookstorm.bookslive.co.za/blog/2014/04/04/molly-blank-and-jonathan-jansens-how-to-fix-south-africas-schools-launched-with-john-maytham/) sends an important message, particularly about the power of school leadership.  As in the United States, the power of a principal cannot be denied. And the “hidden curriculum” of the “emotions and attitude” of the teachers is as critical as the “formal curriculum,” a teacher at one highly successful school stated. Her project was commissioned by Jonathan Jansen, Vice Chancellor at the University of the Free State, an education champion in South Africa.

The educators and the families at Bukani teach us to take the long view. Not everything can be done now, but progress can be made bit by bit. We do see progress at A.V. Bukani.  We do see a strong leadership team of Prinicipal Zilindile Thambo and Deputy Principal Ace Lamani. We continue to have hope this school will build on successes, despite challenges and set-backs.  

We come to recognize that we, steeped in our privilege, don’t have the right to get frustrated when committed teachers come to school, despite illness and loss, to better the lives of their children; and students come to school through the mud and the rocks and who-knows-what, eager to learn.

Commitment

Larry has been working with several teachers that he had not worked with before.  Their commitment is impressive.  One teacher buried two young cousins within the past week, but still came to school, sat right next to Larry, took notes on the guided reading process as she watched, and then planned and did two introductory lessons herself. Another was sick all week but dragged herself to school each day to make sure she was in class when Larry was demonstrating.

Larry did professional development three days this past week. He presented information about beginning reading development and guided reading. After a full day of teaching under challenging conditions, the teachers came and listened intently and were engaged in the session. They asked some thought provoking questions, and only when their sole means of transportation was departing did some of them leave.

Lumka , a grade-four teacher Larry has worked with since our first visit, looked around the room of her peers and stated that they needed to continue meeting like this, discussing teaching practices, sharing their successes and challenges, and improving as professionals. No one disagreed.  Heads nodded in agreement.

After another session on Thursday that ended with no comments or questions after Larry’s presentation (maybe Larry wasn’t the only one who was tired), one of the grade R (kindergarten) teachers, Yolanda, came to talk to him. She wanted him to know that what he was sharing with them was “powerful," even for the foundation phase.

At our weekly debriefing with Paul from Calabash, the organization that organizes volunteers for Bukani and other township schools, the teachers Larry works with spoke of the progress, although slow, they see in the struggling learners Larry asked to work with. They see hope and so does Larry, both for their learners and for the teachers. It will take time, but here in South Africa, in the eastern Cape, in Nomatansanqa, at A. V. Bukani Primary School, they are taking the long view and so are we.

Parents Trek Through the Mud

Eileen’s parent programs continue to build, as parents trek through the rain and the mud to make sure they are part of these. The mothers and grandmothers share some drawings their children made with accompanying letters, words, or stories.

This coming week, the weather looks good on meeting days. The principal sent a note home to all the families about the meetings, highlighting that “parents are the child’s first teacher.” The orange picking season is slowing down a bit so more parents may be available.  Who knows who we will see this week…

Excitement at both ends of the scale

Randi’s work with writing at the upper grades showed there are some solid skills being developed in the language arts. This week we also saw evidence of other areas of knowledge.

Principal Thambo teaches Natural Sciences to the older learners and he came in beaming on Thursday. He gave the students the assignment of building an electric circuit, with the project due on Monday. One group completed the assignment two days early.

At the other end, there is much excitement surrounding new classrooms and play areas for Grade R next year. Three spacious double-classrooms are under construction with three additional covered play areas. They are already painted bright primary colors with built-in cubbies. The Grade R teachers at Bukani are loving and full of life. We can only imagine the learning that will blossom at what South African educators rightly call “the foundation phase.”

 

So how do we feel as we enter our fourth and final week here?  Life here is engaging, rewarding, hopeful, frustrating, fascinating, inspiring, devastating, enriching, joyful, depressing, emotional … and exhausting. On Friday we packed up for the weekend in the nearby city, thinking we are worn out and ready to leave next week. And on Friday, we sang with the learners and tearfully wondered how we could leave next week.

Eileen and Larry a/k/a
Nosango and Thando

Returning in August to Support Literacy!

YES!!!  Eileen and Larry are going back to A.V. Bukani Primary School mid-August– mid-September. For the first time, we will be going for an entire month. We always leave after three weeks wishing we could stay longer. So we just did it!

GREAT NEWS: Eileen was awarded the Art Berg Grant from the National Speakers Association. This $4000 grant is awarded to one technology-related project a year at a charitable organization in which an Association member is involved as an active volunteer. We are very honored our project earned the grant this year.

This grant will help increase access to the library. Although the library has become a source of great pride in this township of 15,000-20,000, availability of the books has been limited by an organizational system with no technology. This grant will be used to purchase a computer dedicated to the library and library software. Equally important, there will be funds for training and continuing IT maintenance. With these improvements, we hope the library can soon be available to the entire community.

More Resources to Support Beginning Readers

The South African Education Department recently implemented new standards and it is exciting to see the practices that are imbedded in the standards are just the things we have been working on with the teachers at Bukani – including read-alouds, use of “big books” for shared reading, and most important, guided reading, which is what Larry will be working on with the teachers when we return this year. Since the teachers have been working on these practices for several years, they have a great foundation on which to build.

Of course, so much is dependent upon resources. Who would believe that after delivering 23,000 donated books to create a library for the school, there would be the need for more! Well, there is. While the books we brought are wonderful (THANK YOU!), there is a great need for many very early reading books. That’s because the students at Bukani are learning to read in a new language and the books that are needed are very short (as few as 8 pages long). As you can imagine, once they get the hang of it, the students can zip through an 8-page book quite quickly. Hence, the need for many, many books at increasingly difficult levels for the students to read. 

You, the supporters of this project, have been so generous over the past few years. The funds have been used to create and support the library, a computer teacher for the students, and so much more. We’ve spent it all at the school.  If you feel in your hearts to make a donation now, these donations will support the purchase of these specialized very early readers -  Directions are on"How to Donate" tab.

 Larry has already ordered over 600 books from Pioneer Valley Books at a cost of nearly $3,000, including a discount from Pioneer Valley, to help the teachers with beginning reading. The recommendation for this purchase came from our daughter Sara, a literacy teacher who has come with us on two of our volunteer trips and uses these books in her work. In addition, Eileen found an on line 50% off sale for more early readers that has Larry’s mouth watering. (BTW –A donation is a great way to mark a birthday, anniversary or other celebration. We are happy to send a personal note in recognition of a special day and we are grateful to have been a part of some very special commemorations.)  

Whether you support us with a donation or with your words of encouragement, know that we appreciate it! 

The Adlebergs are Joining Us!!

One more bit of good news: Educators Randi and Steve Adleberg will join us at A.V. Bukani for two weeks this year. We are thrilled to share their skills, knowledge and enthusiasm. Both had long careers in Fairfax County Public Schools, Steve as an elementary school teacher and principal; and Randi as a middle and high school language arts teacher. We know the teachers and students at Bukani will benefit from their expertise (and we will enjoy the company of these good friends).

Eileen and Larry

We're heading back to South Africa soon!

We're heading back to our beloved school in South Africa in late August! Although we haven't been back recently (Larry's -successful!- back surgery last September forced us to cancel our plans last year), we have stayed in touch with the principal and our volunteer contact. Through your generous donations, together we've funded a library aide who has helped keep the library organized and functioning. We're planning to go back this year with more books at an easy level and we'll be providing targeted professional development.  Much more to tell you in the near future….

Keeping Progress in Mind

It’s the end of our second week here – two-thirds of our visit is over. This is the point we always say that next year we’ll come for six weeks or maybe two months. But we get home, and we only seem to be able to carve out three weeks from our lives. But then again, maybe next year…

It’s always gratifying to be reminded of the lessons we learn from the incredible people here.  Mrs. Nyati, a grandmother who always teaches us about perseverance and hard work, doesn’t disappoint.  This year, her English skills are impressive. Eileen asked her if she was taking English classes.  “No, I don’t take classes,” she said. “So how did you learn?” Eileen asked. “Well, I like to read the paper, and I watch television shows in English.” Mrs. Nyati repeated her request for an English-Xhosa dictionary, something we finally found on the weekend. When Eileen gave it to her on Monday, Mrs. Nyati is speechless, leafing through the pages as if they were written with gold leaf. “Now I will be a professional,” she says. Over the following days, she has reported that she reads it every night. “It is such a wonderful book,” she says.

In many ways, this has been our most productive trip. There have been no major interruptions, such as teacher strikes or public holidays.  We are working with the teachers all day, every day.

And yet, for every thing we do, we see 10 more we’d like to do. Larry has been working with the teachers in Grades 2, 3 and 4 on techniques for improving comprehension by helping students retell the stories they are reading. He’d like to show all the teachers other techniques, such as how to use the students’ work to create spelling lessons and how to extend the comprehension techniques, but he needs to focus on reinforcing the important technique he’s teaching. Some of the teachers are very eager to learn everything they possibly can, so Larry has been teaching them some of the other techniques. At the final professional development session, he will ask some of the teachers to share their particular strengths, of which there are many, with the charge that they share it with their colleagues. We look forward to reports during the year about how this collaborative approach is going.  We do think the faculty is ready for this.

GRADE 1 curriculum 

Eileen has been going into the Grade 1 and Grade R (K) classrooms and doing read-alouds and singing, sometimes with the older students as well. The children love “Are You My Mother?” by P.D. Eastman, about a baby bird who hatches while his mother is away getting food and he goes out to find his  mother. One of the Grade 1 teachers showed Eileen that part of their curriculum involves matching baby animals to their mothers, so the book is relevant on many levels. 

The teachers of early grades are eager to be included in the professional development, so this year, Larry provided workshops on reading Big Books. We’d love to find good Big Books in Xhosa for the younger readers and more in English for Grade 1 where they are now beginning to teach English.

"Toot! Toot!"

We found a book with the words for “She’ll be Coming Around the Mountain When She Comes,” a song Larry sang with hand motions with the teachers and older students when we were here last.  The younger students love it as much as the older students, and greet us in the street with “Toot! Toot!”, the opening hand motion. We’re getting a kick out of the fact that an entire school on the tip of Africa loves singing an old American folksong – as much as we love hearing them sing songs in Xhosa during the morning opening . Interculturalism at work.

During the lunch break, the teachers began singing some of the songs Larry taught with his guitar two years ago – “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” “There’s a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea.” There hasn’t been much time for singing with the guitar this year because of our other work, but clearly the teachers (and students) miss it.

Keeping Progress in Mind

We try very hard to keep our blinders on, so we focus on the needs of this school in this community without thinking of all the other needs around us. Even with that, sometimes we are overwhelmed by the incredible needs and the obstacles the students face -- particularly as they are about to take exams that will be compared to students from schools that are well financed with parents’ money and who are taking the exams in their mother tongue.

The school system is built to be unequal. Each school requires parents to pay fees, set by the parents in that school. In poor communities like ours, these fees are waived, so poor schools must subsist on the barebones budget provided by the district education office. In our township, if you’ve got the money to pay the fees and to pay for transportation, you can send your child to another school a few miles away, but few in this township can afford that.  Paul, our volunteer coordinator from Calabash Trust in Port Elizabeth, was telling us that his three girls go to a school where parents pay about $100 per child each month and there are 1000 children in the school. So the school abounds with resource teachers and extra programs.  We wonder how the enormous inequities will ever be overcome.   

Yet we have to refocus and remember how far this school has come over the past 5 years. The teachers have worked hard to implement the new strategies that we and other volunteers have shared, along with training on new materials and curriculum from the education department. Many work hard to update their skills, taking courses and attending workshops.

There are far more resources available to the students and the teachers over the past few years. The computer lab, once dusty and forgotten, now has up-to-date computers with curriculum-related software and even some with internet access.  Teachers work with their students in the lab on a regular basis.  There is a quality printer connected to the computers through a network.  We are simply amazed at how far this computer lab has come.

The impact of computers is felt throughout the area.  Principal Thambo reports there are a record numbers of students in Grades 1 and R.  “This is because parents have heard about our computer studies,” he says. Other schools in the area are not seeing growth in numbers like this. In fact, the education district thought Mr. Thambo was inflating his numbers to get additional funds. “I told them to come here and count the children. They are here. This is real,” he told me.

There are other resources – many purchased through the generosity of regular readers of this blog. Five years ago, there was one copier which rarely worked. Today there are two excellent copiers working all the time. Can a school function without a copier? Of course. But it certainly helps the teachers and administrators get things done efficiently. And, equally important, it shows the faculty that their time is valued.

Families Volunteering the Library

Principal Thambo asked Eileen to facilitate a meeting with families, and she eagerly agreed. It has been challenging to get parents to volunteer in the school, and there is a new group of parents who had never taken part in the earlier parent meetings while Eileen was here last.

At the meeting, there was a dialogue on the importance of parents and teachers being partners in the children’s education, with everyone giving what they can.  Unfortunately, there are many high school graduates in the township who cannot get a job. But what they can do is read to the younger children in the afternoons. In that way, they can gain self-esteem and use their time productively, while improving the education of all the children. One of our hopes for the future is to identify a parent who can coordinate parent involvement in the community. It is always hard in just 3 short weeks.

Eileen asked for volunteers to help organize and inventory the library. Some of the boxes of books that were shipped were donated to the municipal library and some of the more difficult ones were donated to the middle school and high school. Mr. Thambo has been asked by his superiors to determine exactly what books are in the library.

The following morning, several parents came to help. They enjoyed taking the books off the shelves and checking them against the master list, looking through the books and reinforcing their own English as they went. The process had value far beyond checking off book titles. The parents couldn’t wait to take books home and share them with their children. These parents were given permission to do that, but unfortunately there is no system for taking out books beyond the classrooms.

Increasing use of the library

One of our goals for the future is determining how to increase utilization of the library. Even the classrooms are not yet taking full advantage of the library. Grade 1 and R teachers want books in their classrooms, but as yet that hasn’t happened. The teachers in Grades 2, 3 and 4 have boxes of books in their class for students to take home at night, but they don’t visit the library to change out the books. Even more important, we don’t see many books going home regularly. The teachers tell us there are other priorities and that parents don’t read the books with the children. Part of the issue is that the students need help identifying books that they can read themselves, and Larry is working with the teachers on this.

A key challenge in this school, and others like it, is there is no funding for non-teaching staff. This seems to be an issue only in this province’s education district, and there is hope that this will change now that the national government has taken control of this failing education district.  In the meantime, every time a new responsibility is added, it falls on the principal or the teachers. While there is a library committee, they have challenges to overcome. Part of the issue is that books have never been a part of the culture of the school or the township. Another part is the desire to keep the books in good condition – in other words, to protect them from destruction by not using them. We’re working on this…

Learning to enjoy the natural resources

While we have enjoyed staying at Rosedale B&B, we miss seeing our friends in the township every day, particularly our former host family, the Mofus. The owners of Rosedale, Keith and Nomdumiso, are friends of the Mofus and they invited them over for a brai on Thursday. We had a wonderful time.

A brai is far more than a bar-be-que. It involves sitting around the firepit as the wood fire is built, waiting for the coals to get hot, cooking over the coals, and then enjoying the fire for hours afterwards. In the cool weather, you enjoy the warmth of the fire. In the hot weather, the smoke keeps the bugs away. It’s an entire evening of sitting out under the stars, bundled up if you need to be. Compare that to an  American bar-be-que where we try to light charcoal as quickly as possible, pouring on chemicals to speed the process; then we cook the food and retreat inside if the weather isn’t perfect. Sitting around the campfire in cool weather is reserved for a camping trip.

The enjoyment of the outdoors no matter what the season is one of the many lessons we learn on our visits here. We are always struck with how wasteful we are at home. Here, cups and plates are washed, not thrown away, even with a large crowd. We are very aware of the limited resources around us. We begin to guard small bits of plastic wrap, keep our paper napkins for future use (there are none at school) and view a plastic bag as a treasure. Yes, we have been washing out our small plastic bags for sandwiches!

A weekend trip to the beautiful “Valley of Desolation”

We always talk about traveling a bit on the weekends, but by the time Friday rolls around, we typically are exhausted and need to spend our awake time finding resources for the next week. Having the library at the school has made a huge difference. There are books geared to teachers as well as students that we can use in our professional development. Plus, this year, we are on the same wavelength with the teachers and planning was much easier.

So we decided to spend a weekend in Graaff-Reinet, a tourist town about 3 hours north of Port Elizabeth, surrounded by the Camdeboo National Park.  On Saturday, we hiked around the park on a beautiful trail with spectacular views above the Valley of Desolation. It has the feel of the desert southwest of the U.S., but with springbok (like small deer), kudu, and ostriches running about. We get a true appreciation of wide African skies, with views of mountain range after mountain range in the distance.

We stayed in a lovely B&B and enjoyed the local food. The only downside was reading a book about the area that was in the B&B library. Although published in 2008, you would have thought it was written under Apartheid. The entire history was presented from the view of white Dutch settlers, with the Xhosa tribe that lived in the area viewed as a problem for the settlers without any recognition of their stake in the area. There was an entire chapter on angora wool, a mainstay of trade for the whites; yet there was no chapter on slavery, prevalent in that area. (Yes, it bore a striking resemblance to books on American history from a generation ago.) I was told that Graaff-Reinet is one of those communities that still hasn’t accepted that life is different these days.

Well, that wasn’t the only downside. We picked up a 24-hour bug there which made the 3-hour drive home a bit dicey. But Larry’s didn’t hit until after we were back in Port Elizabeth, so we were OK. We slept most of the rest of the day. On to week three.