Tag: south africa

An Interesting Preposition

22 July 09

During our final week in South Africa, we were able to get into the schools of the teacher’s we had worked with the first week at Liwa Primary. I asked to pair up with Rachelle, who teaches G8 English and G9 Econ at Siyazakha Primary School. Her energy and excitement after the first week were infectious and I wanted to see her in her element.

I was not disappointed. Working with 40+ learners in a classroom, Rachelle designed lessons that were engaging and tailored to her learners’ needs. That’s something many teachers state-side could benefit from.

Her English learners’ final task at the end of the previous term had been to compose a journal entry about an event in their lives. From her marking of the tasks, Rachelle noted that the bulk of her learners were struggling with the proper choice and use of prepositions in their writing. A quick survey of the students’ writing confirmed frequent composition such as, “My mother has me go to the store to her money on the bank.”

To review, Rachelle first wrote the word “preposition” on the chalk board that stood on its end in front of its former mount. (The boards had been removed over the holidays in the rooms that would eventually be receiving SMART Boards sometime in the coming months.) From there, she drew a box around, “position” and asked her learners what words came to mind when they saw the word “position.” Within minutes, the class had constructed a mindmap of the word which allowed Rachelle to explain, “A preposition is a word that’s used to help explain something’s position, location or place compared to something else.”

She then asked a handful of learners to position themselves at specific points around the classroom and then had their classmates describe where they were in the classroom and identify the prepositions in the sentences they constructed. Everyone could be successful and the entire class was visibly engaged.

Content her review had achieved its desired result and running out of time, Rachelle assigned homework. Each learner was to find 5 pictures from magazines, newspapers and the like and paste each picture on a piece of paper. Next to each picture, the learners were to write one sentence describing something in the picture as it related to the location of something else. As a final touch, the learners were to underline the prepositions in each of their sentences.

At first, my reaction to all of this was to admire the lesson, but worry about its content given the fact that these were Grade 8 learners. Then reality set in. The mother tongue of the children in the townships is Xhosa. They only begin formal English instruction in Grade 4. Considering their training was only 3.5 years old, they were exactly where I’d expect learners of their experience to be if not a little ahead of the game.

This all works toward the point that given an extreme lack of resources, an over-crowded classroom, and personal stories from each learner that could easily have become an insurmountable barrier, this was quality instruction based on the needs of the learners involved. It all-encompassing – in a few of the classrooms I observed during my time at the school, a class’ teacher was simply missing. And, it wasn’t ideal – I’m sure not each and every learner got the full, personal attention he or she would have benefitted from. What is was was exactly what all strong teachers do, making the most out of what they have. I’m not sure more can be asked than that.

The Death of Ritual

20 July 09

Today was a down day during which we debriefed the previous two weeks with Edunova and then had time to ourselves to decompress. Decompression and stray thoughts lead to what’s below.

Becoming a Man:

At 18, Xhosa males are taken into the bush where they become men. According to Khonaya, our guide for our township tours, this ritual is about “learning the identity of the tribe” and “grasping the true essence of ritual.” During their time in this conclave, the boys are circumcised.

During the ritual, Khonaya told  us, the boys are not allowed to flinch or show signs of pain. “Being masculine,” he said, “you have to handle the pain.”

This was just about as much as he could tell us about the ritual as the men are not allowed to divulge or describe what happens once they return.

In fact, during yesterday’s braai, when Terry asked one of the Xhosa Edunova facilitators about when he was taken into the bush, all of the women at the table excused themselves and Terry was told men weren’t allowed to talk about what happened in the bush. 

“I have a younger brother,” Khonaye had told us, “and all I can do is support him when the time comes.”

Sharon asked if there were any differences once the men returned home. Khonaya said sometimes “circumcised boys in the classroom expect to be treated differently” especially by female teachers.

I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around all of this for over two weeks now, and I just don’t think I can. More to the point, this is one of the pieces that creates a breech in my ability to understand the culture here. I’ve no basis for comparison. While I’m certain this ritual and others like it have far-reaching social implications, I simply don’t know what I don’t know.

When I see the community that exists here, the strength of the social structure, I begin to worry that the plurality of America also means we’ve watered down or lost our rituals along the road to coexistence. While I’m not suggesting the adoption of this particular ritual, I do wonder if the lack of a shared threshold experience leaves most of our youth without a clear sense of whom they are and where they come from.