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Published: February 13th 2014
9 April 2014
It’s Sunday night and I had a great day...taught Gr 12 Maths Lit at 9 am and followed that with the start of my art program. Then I came home, finished a Jack Reacher novel, my latest escapist literature, (Lee Child’s sentences are ¼ the length of Charles Dickens’ (my previous escapist literature) ....in fact Child doesn’t even use full sentences getting Reacher out of one impossible situation after another...but those impossible situations are fun to read about) ... then I called my Mom, heard about the snow in Seattle, and now I am writing this blog about the new school year and what it feels like to see “Close of Service” on this year’s calendar. I know I still need to write and post photos about touring South Africa during the 5 week break between school years 2013 and 2014, but that must wait for another relaxing weekend when I have finished another escapist read.
On Jan 1, I got out my new Beatles calendar from Roseann and turned to Nov 12. I wrote 0 there, and on every previous week I added 7 days until I got to the beginning of the year. Today’s glance at the calendar shows I have 276 days to go!
My PCV service this year includes secondary projects, the school library and an art program, besides teaching. Because my teaching load is reduced and I have materials developed from last year, I think I can work on these projects in addition to teaching and still come home after school and watch Stephen Colbert episodes (or other TV shows or movies) for a break!!! (Last year I was preparing lessons late every night for Maths Gr 12 (Trig, Calculus, “what-what” (SA for etc.) I also teach extra classes for Gr 12 Maths Lit and Gr 12 Maths (to help out the Maths teacher) Those are Sunday mornings and 7 am some school days. Gr 12 gets so much attention because their pass rate determines the schools’ performance ranking. It’s another instance of the motive backfiring on the education system...educating all the other grades gets short shrift, and teachers are just trying to make up for past neglect when preparing Gr 12 for the exams.
So I started 2014 with all 3 grades of Maths Lit drawing the South Africa flag, measuring and multiplying with fractions to draw the triangle and trapezoids correctly, and other applications of maths (mathematics is a plural word-- I now teach Maths not Math). My classes are smaller this year than last year. About fifteen Gr 10 and 11 learners did not return. Four girls got pregnant, and others did not advance to the next grade (by failing two or more subjects) and decided to drop. (Learners may fail one subject and still go on to the next grade; i.e. You can advance to Gr 11 where you take Gr 11 Maths even though you failed Gr 10 Maths) Gr 10 and 11 Maths Lit are ten and sixteen learners respectively. (The Gr 10 class is a blip ...most classes are 30-35 learners but theirs has always been very small) There are two tracks, Maths/Physical Science learners and Maths Lit/Tourism learners, and Gr 10 has ten Maths Lit learners and seven Maths learners for example. Gr 12 has 21 Maths Lit learners and only 4 Maths learners. Two of last year’s Maths learners were encouraged by their teacher to switch to Maths Lit where they can be more successful. There is no counselor at Sele, of course, and the school is judged by the numbers, of course, so whether the learner is making the best choice is hard to say. Maths/Physical Science track is mandatory at universities for fields like engineering, and mining engineering is huge in South Africa. But I believe the Maths Lit track is becoming more appreciated by higher education..at least that’s what the school circuit leader tells us. I like the curriculum and see opportunities for teaching critical thinking there. For example: R9.00 - R7.20 = R2.80 (Rand is the SA currency), but the same numbers put in the calculator using the key for hours, seconds, and minutes makes 9:00 - 7:20 = 2 hours 40 minutes. Why do the numbers come out differently? I could see my Gr 12’s thinking hard to figure this out. I compared it to being 15 years 8 months old...do you have 2 months or 4 months to go before you turn 16? It is because a year is 12 months and an hour is 60 minutes .......Kids are not being asked to use critical thinking in their education. (some of you ask...where
are they teaching critical thinking?)
A story about the state of critical thinking. or the state of....you name it... here in SA. The ugogo in my host family, Martha, 74 years old, was taken to see the doctor in KwaMhlanga four times last week. After the 2
nd visit she and her daughter (who speaks English) showed me the pills the doctor gave her. I read the information on the high blood pressure, rheumatoid arthritis, and heartburn packages, but there were also 4 little plastic bags with only names and directions for dosage written on them. Martha indicated a pain in her left upper abdomen. She has been on blood pressure meds for years...I wondered what the doctor was treating with all those pills. When Martha returned from her 3
rd visit to the doctor she showed me the sore red skin under her left breast...she seemed to be under the impression that it was because of high blood pressure. It was still very painful the next day and her son drove her to the doctor again. (Her son works for the Police in Pretoria but lives here.) And guess what? Because of the heat we’ve been experiencing lately, she has heat blisters!! Sitting by a fan in the house with a loose towel to keep herself cool and dry will help it heal. Maybe Martha knew she had blisters under there and didn’t tell the doctor; maybe she never even knew...just knew she felt pain. But the doctor has no excuse..for not finding the real source of the pain, and not explaining that the blisters had nothing to do with her high blood pressure. I brought her some baby powder to help her stay dry there. And it has been cooling off a little with thundershowers at night, so that helps.
Next story: The Maths teacher announced that our school would be unable to compete in Math Olympiads this year because of the postal strike. The teacher believes this strike could last a long while and prevent delivery of practice and test materials. (If materials are available by internet, our school doesn’t have internet) Then she told the learners, actually, she “begged” the learners that when they received their entry fees back, they return the money to their parents. There would be occasions in the future where they would need to ask their parents to contribute. I am beginning to acquire the mind-set of the teachers about these learners, though it’s hard to describe. You have to get to know them!! Mr. Kgotsa always precedes his announcements at assembly with one of two phrases: “We have a problem.” or “We have a serious problem.” It cracks me up! The learners are just waiting to hear what this teacher has to say now. Is it that learners are not bringing utensils to eat lunch with and are using their rulers instead? Or is it that the practice of going out to the latrine in between classes has got to stop? Kgotsa is completely serious about these problems, but he also makes them laugh about it too. And it’s evident he cares about the kids, he always hauls a chair outside at the end of the day to keep an eye on the learners leaving school.
Which leads me to the last story. The Water Saga continues: I know little more about the reasons for the water shortage in my village. I know there is a spate of unrest throughout the country over poor service delivery. Two PCV’s in the eastern part of my province were taken out of their site by PC staff for a couple days because of public protests (toi-toi) over water shortages. People were burning tires on the roads and disrupting traffic. When things settled down, they returned with large storage containers. I guess they have to pay their family to drive to the next village to fill their storage containers. Maybe the problem is the water treatment plant has been allowed to fall into disrepair, maybe it’s a political squabble between municipalities. I heard a reason on SABC, the public radio news channel, that could explain what’s happening in Kameelpoort. Our village has large Jo-Jo’s (plastic storage bins) placed around the neighborhoods and a water truck is sent out to keep them filled. So when there is no running water to the taps in the houses (which is about 90%!o(MISSING)f the time since last June) people use wheelbarrows to haul water to their homes from the Jo-Jo. The radio announcer said that it was in the interest of some companies to keep these truck drivers employed delivering water to communities where the water is shut off.
Last weekend was the last opportunity to register to vote in the May 7 elections. One registration center was shut down by protestors over lack of service delivery to their region. And today, 11 Feb, is the anniversary of the day Mandela was released from prison and spoke to joyous people at the Grand Parade in CapeTown. (I was part of a more somber crowd in December when I was in CapeTown during the week of South Africa’s memorial for Mandela upon his death.) And I love this piece of trivia...The men and women voting as 18-20 year olds this year are called “Born Free’s” because they were born after apartheid was brought down in 1994. So, the radio announcer asked this morning for calls in to the program to discuss the importance of the vote and whether shutting down voter registration centers because of dissatisfaction with the government was appropriate. My water situation was heaven for 5 days. We had water for 5 days straight, and I did all the laundry I could, and kept all my containers full. And the water was off this afternoon when I returned from school. Oh well, it was good while it lasted.
Summing up these 3 items about South Africa. I started with the idea of critical thinking, and I often ask myself: How can you account for what’s happening? That question is not asked very often here, and I can see that it’s pointless to pursue that line of thought so much. I like to take things into account, but if things happen so RANDOMLY, (is there a better word for things happening on no account?) you just have to get on with doing what you’re doing.
So to end this blog about the beginning of the school year, I have to brag about the results from last year’s exams. Gr 12’s wrote their national exams in November and learned the results on 4 Jan. I was in Pretoria with my daughters who toured SA for one week with me before visiting my village the first week of school. I called the principal the morning of 4 Jan and heard that 96%!o(MISSING)f our Gr 12 class passed (matric’d). The numbers in my Maths classes are: 11 out of 13 Pure Maths passed and 16 out of 16 Maths Lit passed. Both of my part-time learners in Pure Maths failed, but all four of my part-time learners in Maths Lit passed. Part-time learners are those who failed previously, but return to class to try to write the exams again. Remember that a learner is allowed to fail one subject and still be successful, so out of the two Pure Maths learners who failed, one of them passed her other subjects and was able to matric. The other failed Pure Maths and Physical Science and didn’t matric. I was also happy with the high levels attained by some of the learners, but I won’t bore you with those numbers. Last year was loads and loads of work, but also interesting... challenging because of the Pure Maths topics I had to learn, and funny because I get such a kick out of these kids. They like to laugh...and it’s nice to get them laughing. I learned that it’s not my superb wit that gets a laugh. My principal really gets them laughing at assemblies Monday and Friday mornings. He usually speaks in Sepedi, so only when the kids are really laughing hard do I ask another teacher to translate. But the jokes sound quite lame, at least in translation, so now I think that these kids will just laugh at anything. I still enjoy it anyway.
There IS one more things, speaking of enjoying the kids and looking forward to the year. I had 15 kids from this year’s Gr 12 and one girl from last year’s Gr 12 come to my room on Sunday to paint T-shirts. My daughters brought old T-shirts and fabric paint from the US so that I could have shirts for my Art Assistants to wear. These kids will come to my art sessions with Grades 4,5 and 6 learners and with Gr 7, 8, and 9 learners and help with translating my English instructions into Sepedi. They also taught me how to say “Welcome to Art class” in Sepedi. I brought my radio and one of the boys found a good station (since I only listen to public radio, which is in English) After a while, the song “Lean on Me” came on, a newer version of Bill Withers’ original. The DJ spoke mostly in some African language, maybe Sepedi, maybe Zulu, but there’s always some English interspersed in there. And I heard something about the greatest song ever written. Then he played Bill Withers singing it. The kids are all happy; painting and singing along here and there. So I say something about how I had seen Bill Withers perform this song way back when. (in the early 70’s when I was a student at UND in Grand Forks) I love remembering that concert, it was so good, and had Steve Goodman as opening act. But the kids maybe couldn’t understand what I was saying...or couldn’t believe that this song was around THAT long ago...or that I could have ever been a teenager going to concerts... They were typical kids in their own world. But it was very meaningful to me to be there with these kids doing art and listening to this song I loved with all my memories of it, and thinking of the memories these kids are making at this time in their lives. The DJ played the new version of “Lean on Me” one more time after that to make his point that it was the greatest song ever. And now I think he’s right.
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Kristen
non-member comment
Carolyn, I really enjoyed this entry. Will you write a book when you return to the states??? Congrats on your maths students!I'm glad you can branch out now a bit, especially into an art program. That sounds like fun. Speaking of critical thinking: I know a New Jersey governor that could use some. Also a New Orleans mayor. Or is it the public that needs the thinking lessons? Hmmmm. Think of me joining you, half a world away, when you watch Jon Stewart.