Hey folks... Erin here.
Well it's been 3 years and I am off for another adventure. It's time to get this blog back up and runnin! Tomorrow morning I head off to Israel! I don't have a whole lot planned and so far that's my favorite part... Keep up with all the places I'll go through my pics I post and for some sappy juicy insight... Follow along here.
Cheers, :)
Final packing. (This has been stressful)
I won't be sleeping tonight,
Erin
Saturday, August 30, 2014
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Week three of teaching: Monday, August 1st – Thursday, August 4th (cont.)
…so as I get comfortable sitting on my living room couch in Cleveland, Ohio, recovering from mad jetlag and uploading pictures, I figured I could also update a little more, before this gets old.
(Continuation of week three of teaching)
Wednesday August 3rd:
On Wednesday Jen (another girl from the trip who is also at Brooklands Primary) and I switched classrooms. She is in Grade R (kindergarten), which is what I am used to so I thought it would be good to see how things run here in a kindergarten room. Today they were dong an assessment. It was to look at pictures on a page, cut them out and order them sequentially. The pictures told a story of getting ready in the morning; brushing teeth, washing face, eating breakfast, getting dressed… it was interesting to see how the students arranged this because not everyone’s morning routine is the same. For instance, I brush my teeth before I eat breakfast, however, I know people who like to eat breakfast first and then brush their teeth, before the leave the hose. So, if you were asking my opinion, I don’t think this was a good story to use as an assessment, because it would be difficult to tell the student they were ‘wrong’ and the story was not in the ‘correct’ order, if that was in fact the order of events of their typical morning. To practice learning how to sequence events, yet this would be a fantastic story because it would allow the student to think back and recollect ideas from their day and correctly order them. However, as an assessment of critical thinking, it is difficult to evaluate accurately, unless there is not ‘correct’ answer and the teacher just wants the student to be able to explain the story properly. This was not the case though, in this instance, there was a right and wrong answer. Anyways, I encouraged the students to do their best and to help along the way I had them explain to me how they were ordering the events to make sure they at least understood what they were doing. If there was a mistake, speaking it out loud then usually helped them recognize their mistake and they could then correct it.
We spent half of the day working on this assessment and then in groups I took the kids on the playground. This gave me some time to talk to them and get to know them a little. They were very cute, I had a good day! But I did miss my grade 6 classes. In grade R they only go half a day, so after I was able to go back to my room, I worked on making some worksheets and then the day was over.
That night we went out in Stellenbosch with Randall’s family friend Nathan. Apparently their Wednesday nights are like our Thursday nights J. We went to his friend Walisha’s flat (like an apartment) and hung out there for a while, then we headed out to this club called Catwalk and it was PACKED!! There were strobe lights going loud music playing people dancing. And apparently it was a ‘slow’ night. I guess it was pretty comparable to the states but not Michigan State, it was a lot more ‘clubby’ and they don’t go out till wayyyy later and the bars are open till like 3 am! …Needless to day, we didn’t get much sleep and the following day at school was going to be a rough one.
Then came Thursday morning August 4th. Wooo weee was I tired!! I spent most of the day cutting out and making activities for the kids. It actually took almost the whole day! The kids were about to have some great activities to do for the following week. Thursday was our last day of school for the week, as we prepared for our ‘final’ weekend trip together..4 nights in George! This was the big weekend we had all been looking forward to… THE BEST WEEKEND EVER!!
Thursday night after school we all met up to play some cricket. Cricket is just another one of the most confusing sports here. Its kinda like baseball though in the sense that you try and hit a ball with a stick, but other then that is not the same at all. Soooo we didn’t really learn how to play..but we tried and had a good time! A few injuries and some weird scoring later…we had a winner? Haha no one really got it at all we just focused on not missing the ball. However, this coming weekend we are doing the bungle jumping and I needed anything to keep my mind off of it…I had been freaking all week!!
Ok that’s all I got for now im going to go finish my papers and then ill finish blogging the last week of South Africa. Thanks for hangin in there with me!
Much love,
Erin
p.s. jet lag I hate you…I have been up since 5am waaa
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Week three of teaching: Monday, August 1st – Thursday, August 4th
Monday August 1st
Well another week gone by and it was Monday morning once again, as we started off the week with assembly. I am starting to like this routine and I think I could totally get used to it. I think it’s a really nice way to kick off the week. It’s a time for the school to come together reflect and spread positive motivation for the week to come. This week the speaker talked about happiness. We must find happiness in everything that we do, even when we are not happy. We must try and find the positive in the negative. And ya know, just try and be happy..its makes everything better!
Today was a big day, as I mentioned earlier. It was an evaluation day where advisors came to the school to assess the curriculum and success of the students thus far, so, I taught for a large portion of the day while the teachers met with the advisors. I winged it pretty much the whole day because I wasn’t really expecting to be teaching, but for the most part I think it went pretty well. Its tiring work man im not even kidding!! But when you give the students positive attention and show that you care, it’s evident that they try harder. I taught about photosynthesis (thank you SME) and verbs and verb tense, which sounds easy but when English is the learner’s second language…its not so easy and I was even getting myself tripped up a little. I gave the students 4 verbs to conjugate and I said that they had to write 3 sentences with each word; one in past tense, one in present tense and one in future tense. Then this is where things got a little tricky. You see the students were writing sentences that were in the past tense, “the boy was playing soccer” however, they didn’t conjugate the verb correctly, because ‘playing’ is in continuous tense, but ‘was paying’ makes it past tense…ya see how this can then get tricky (and don’t forget this was the Afrikaans class). Needles to say, explaining auxiliary verbs is NOT easy, and I suck at grammar and spelling, if you haven’t already noticed sooo I struggled with this one lol. But I explained the best I could and Im pretty sure they got it, kind of! So go me, and ill work on it for next time! anyways, Marena said that the evaluations went pretty well yet the math scores were still lower then they wanted them to be. Brooklands Primary is one of the better and higher scorning, non ex-model C schools in the Cape Town area. An ex-model C school is a former white school during the apartheid. These school are still however located in affluent areas and thus largely populated with by children coming from the wealthier spectrum. The schools have nicer facilities and more resources and to keep it this way, their schools fees are quite high, therefore making is a difficult circle to break among student demographic. So, we, at Brooklands Primary pride on the success of our students given the resources and facilities that we have. Focusing back on the curriculum, students in primary school focus on I think its 9 different subjects! To me, this is ineffective and a waste of time. I am not 100% sure of the subjects however, some of them include the normal; math, language (English and Afrikaans), natural sciences, history and geography, which is then split into some kind of pre economics and accounting or business prep, life orientation (not sure what that is) and some more. In America we focus on 4 main subjects, math literacy, science and social studies. Students don’t even being business prep or anything like that until high school electives and even at the collegiate level. And then, we devote most of our focus on math and literacy, and as curriculum advance there is an even bugger push towards writing and reading in literacy and how this helps with all other subject areas. I agree with this. If a student is a proficient reader and writer then can better comprehend the material they read, internalize and conceptualize it, avoiding the task of memorization, which only lasts until the test is over anyways. when students write out their thoughts and responses it gives them a chance to explain their thinking and allows teacher to better address misconceptions and so on. then teachers can also give more effective feedback to the learners and give them opportunities to revise. Again this helps internalize information and while less time may be spend of science and social studies students still seem to perform well. I think this curriculum style would be extremely beneficial to the South African school districts. Many of my grade 6 students still struggle with spelling, sentence structure, verb subject agreement, and difficulty in reading fluently and thus advocate less effort to comprehension. In turn, they are not learning what they are reading or copying off the board it is just systematic and basically useless. However, after this evaluation, the curriculum advisors did decide to combine a few subjects together into the ‘arts and culture’ category. I think this is good, freeing up some time for more important subject areas, such a s literacy and math and basic science. This change will happen in 2013!
Well after a long day of teaching, I had fun! I think this might have been when I actually realized how fun it can be! I really felt like I was doing something with the older kids. While teaching the kids how to read and write in kindergarten is the most basic and important foundation to education, it was really cool to move away from that and into deeper content – I felt like I was actually teaching! It was cool, I really do like working in older grades, its nice to have an actual conversation with your student, they help you learn a lot too, it’s like working together to figure out the answer.
So to conclude the busy day, Marena, Charles, Randall and I went out sight seeing and to Spur Monday night burger special. I have become quite the regular there, I don’t even need a menu…or a dessert menu lol. First stop was camps bay, we watched the sun sat over the ocean…I AM getting used to this…im going to miss the mountains and sunsets the most – no question. We then drove up signal hill, one of the first places we went as a group (I told you about it once before), but this time we went at night to look at the city lights!! Jjooeee es lekker bra. English: its was suuuper nice! The lights were amazing, you could see again where the ocean started when it dropped off black and then a speck of light as a boat off in the distance. Im sure you’re getting used to this by now lol I know I am…then it was off to spur for din din, the line wasn’t too long that was nice – and a chicken burger it was! Yummm.
By the time that was all done…yup, you guessed it was pooped and went right to bed. If you haven’t been able to tell already, I’ve gotten into a pattern here. Wake up early, go to school, do stuff after, eat, get tired and go to bed. Haha so as you can se there really has been no time for updates so that is why two weeks later on the plane home im finally getting it done lol.
Tuesday August 2nd
So I have been noticing that my blogs keep getting longer and longer, and probably more boring and boring for all of you because you might not care to read my text book about teacher education. So, I apologize and from now I will try to keep it short and simple unless its something realllllly interesting that I think all of you might like! (if your still reading)
So Tuesday we went over my photosynthesis lesson….hardly any remembered what I taugh…wommppp wommpppp that’s shitty. But, hey you win some you loose some. It probably has to do with the reading and writing comprehension I talked about earlier. So their punishment was to stay in during interval and copy a paragraph out of their life science books…how this was effective – I don’t know but, hopefully it taught them a lesson. at least they were writing, but they were coping…it could maybe have been more effective if they had to look up the photosynthesis paragraph and instead of copying it, put it in their own words. This would help with their reading and writing AND photosynthesis comprehension. Then after school Marean and I went to a math workshop, this was kinda interesting so Ill brief it quickly for you. It was about measurement and the importance of drilling measurement in grades 3 and 4 and then really applying it and manipulating in grades 5 and 6. The workshop leader showed us a lot of hands on and interactive activities you can do with the students to help them grasp the concept of measurement. These were cool things, kinda like science experiments, but with math. Students would have to actually measure things and work with objects to estimate, and then find an accurate measurement. This helps students to conceptualize size and understand its meaning. We also talked a lot about ways to still do such activities even if your school had minimal resources. We learned about activities you can make on your own with out buying a kit and stuff! It was really cool, but im a math nerd soo I though it was fun. He also showed us math puzzles and mind trick that’s are good ways to get the students minds working! Well that’s about as exciting as it got for the day. And of course when we finally got home, I was tired as could be. Learning and teaching..wooo rough day. But on the bright side we actually got home early enough today to make dinner instead of going out to dinner! Marena made a delicious curry and then…….we went to Spur again for dessert
Came home aaand ….you guessed it, passed out for a Wednesday repeat!
Well that’s about all the time I have for now, computer is going to die…the rest of the week will just have to come later…like usual
Landing in the states in approx 2-2.5 hours!! Yayy!! Im excited to be home (almost!) but good thing the adventure stories are still coming!
Byee for now!!
Well another week gone by and it was Monday morning once again, as we started off the week with assembly. I am starting to like this routine and I think I could totally get used to it. I think it’s a really nice way to kick off the week. It’s a time for the school to come together reflect and spread positive motivation for the week to come. This week the speaker talked about happiness. We must find happiness in everything that we do, even when we are not happy. We must try and find the positive in the negative. And ya know, just try and be happy..its makes everything better!
Today was a big day, as I mentioned earlier. It was an evaluation day where advisors came to the school to assess the curriculum and success of the students thus far, so, I taught for a large portion of the day while the teachers met with the advisors. I winged it pretty much the whole day because I wasn’t really expecting to be teaching, but for the most part I think it went pretty well. Its tiring work man im not even kidding!! But when you give the students positive attention and show that you care, it’s evident that they try harder. I taught about photosynthesis (thank you SME) and verbs and verb tense, which sounds easy but when English is the learner’s second language…its not so easy and I was even getting myself tripped up a little. I gave the students 4 verbs to conjugate and I said that they had to write 3 sentences with each word; one in past tense, one in present tense and one in future tense. Then this is where things got a little tricky. You see the students were writing sentences that were in the past tense, “the boy was playing soccer” however, they didn’t conjugate the verb correctly, because ‘playing’ is in continuous tense, but ‘was paying’ makes it past tense…ya see how this can then get tricky (and don’t forget this was the Afrikaans class). Needles to say, explaining auxiliary verbs is NOT easy, and I suck at grammar and spelling, if you haven’t already noticed sooo I struggled with this one lol. But I explained the best I could and Im pretty sure they got it, kind of! So go me, and ill work on it for next time! anyways, Marena said that the evaluations went pretty well yet the math scores were still lower then they wanted them to be. Brooklands Primary is one of the better and higher scorning, non ex-model C schools in the Cape Town area. An ex-model C school is a former white school during the apartheid. These school are still however located in affluent areas and thus largely populated with by children coming from the wealthier spectrum. The schools have nicer facilities and more resources and to keep it this way, their schools fees are quite high, therefore making is a difficult circle to break among student demographic. So, we, at Brooklands Primary pride on the success of our students given the resources and facilities that we have. Focusing back on the curriculum, students in primary school focus on I think its 9 different subjects! To me, this is ineffective and a waste of time. I am not 100% sure of the subjects however, some of them include the normal; math, language (English and Afrikaans), natural sciences, history and geography, which is then split into some kind of pre economics and accounting or business prep, life orientation (not sure what that is) and some more. In America we focus on 4 main subjects, math literacy, science and social studies. Students don’t even being business prep or anything like that until high school electives and even at the collegiate level. And then, we devote most of our focus on math and literacy, and as curriculum advance there is an even bugger push towards writing and reading in literacy and how this helps with all other subject areas. I agree with this. If a student is a proficient reader and writer then can better comprehend the material they read, internalize and conceptualize it, avoiding the task of memorization, which only lasts until the test is over anyways. when students write out their thoughts and responses it gives them a chance to explain their thinking and allows teacher to better address misconceptions and so on. then teachers can also give more effective feedback to the learners and give them opportunities to revise. Again this helps internalize information and while less time may be spend of science and social studies students still seem to perform well. I think this curriculum style would be extremely beneficial to the South African school districts. Many of my grade 6 students still struggle with spelling, sentence structure, verb subject agreement, and difficulty in reading fluently and thus advocate less effort to comprehension. In turn, they are not learning what they are reading or copying off the board it is just systematic and basically useless. However, after this evaluation, the curriculum advisors did decide to combine a few subjects together into the ‘arts and culture’ category. I think this is good, freeing up some time for more important subject areas, such a s literacy and math and basic science. This change will happen in 2013!
Well after a long day of teaching, I had fun! I think this might have been when I actually realized how fun it can be! I really felt like I was doing something with the older kids. While teaching the kids how to read and write in kindergarten is the most basic and important foundation to education, it was really cool to move away from that and into deeper content – I felt like I was actually teaching! It was cool, I really do like working in older grades, its nice to have an actual conversation with your student, they help you learn a lot too, it’s like working together to figure out the answer.
So to conclude the busy day, Marena, Charles, Randall and I went out sight seeing and to Spur Monday night burger special. I have become quite the regular there, I don’t even need a menu…or a dessert menu lol. First stop was camps bay, we watched the sun sat over the ocean…I AM getting used to this…im going to miss the mountains and sunsets the most – no question. We then drove up signal hill, one of the first places we went as a group (I told you about it once before), but this time we went at night to look at the city lights!! Jjooeee es lekker bra. English: its was suuuper nice! The lights were amazing, you could see again where the ocean started when it dropped off black and then a speck of light as a boat off in the distance. Im sure you’re getting used to this by now lol I know I am…then it was off to spur for din din, the line wasn’t too long that was nice – and a chicken burger it was! Yummm.
By the time that was all done…yup, you guessed it was pooped and went right to bed. If you haven’t been able to tell already, I’ve gotten into a pattern here. Wake up early, go to school, do stuff after, eat, get tired and go to bed. Haha so as you can se there really has been no time for updates so that is why two weeks later on the plane home im finally getting it done lol.
Tuesday August 2nd
So I have been noticing that my blogs keep getting longer and longer, and probably more boring and boring for all of you because you might not care to read my text book about teacher education. So, I apologize and from now I will try to keep it short and simple unless its something realllllly interesting that I think all of you might like! (if your still reading)
So Tuesday we went over my photosynthesis lesson….hardly any remembered what I taugh…wommppp wommpppp that’s shitty. But, hey you win some you loose some. It probably has to do with the reading and writing comprehension I talked about earlier. So their punishment was to stay in during interval and copy a paragraph out of their life science books…how this was effective – I don’t know but, hopefully it taught them a lesson. at least they were writing, but they were coping…it could maybe have been more effective if they had to look up the photosynthesis paragraph and instead of copying it, put it in their own words. This would help with their reading and writing AND photosynthesis comprehension. Then after school Marean and I went to a math workshop, this was kinda interesting so Ill brief it quickly for you. It was about measurement and the importance of drilling measurement in grades 3 and 4 and then really applying it and manipulating in grades 5 and 6. The workshop leader showed us a lot of hands on and interactive activities you can do with the students to help them grasp the concept of measurement. These were cool things, kinda like science experiments, but with math. Students would have to actually measure things and work with objects to estimate, and then find an accurate measurement. This helps students to conceptualize size and understand its meaning. We also talked a lot about ways to still do such activities even if your school had minimal resources. We learned about activities you can make on your own with out buying a kit and stuff! It was really cool, but im a math nerd soo I though it was fun. He also showed us math puzzles and mind trick that’s are good ways to get the students minds working! Well that’s about as exciting as it got for the day. And of course when we finally got home, I was tired as could be. Learning and teaching..wooo rough day. But on the bright side we actually got home early enough today to make dinner instead of going out to dinner! Marena made a delicious curry and then…….we went to Spur again for dessert
Came home aaand ….you guessed it, passed out for a Wednesday repeat!
Well that’s about all the time I have for now, computer is going to die…the rest of the week will just have to come later…like usual
Landing in the states in approx 2-2.5 hours!! Yayy!! Im excited to be home (almost!) but good thing the adventure stories are still coming!
Byee for now!!
Monday, August 15, 2011
All Good Things Come to an End...
Over the past 6 weeks I have had some of the greatest experiences of my life. I hiked a mountain, swam w sharks, pet a cheetah, jumped the HIGHEST bridge bungee and rode an elephant and so much more! I came to know and love a beautiful family immersing myself in a new culture. I realized the value of education, I learned more from my students then I thought possible and I learned a lot about myself. So for that, I am incredibly thankful! Goodbyes are never easy... Africa for life! Ill be back!
So im sitting here now at Deo patiently waiting for Corvell to tell us its time to go to the airport. I just spent 20 minutes trying to make a facebook status that wasn’t too long, also trying to finish all my blog updates and ALSO trying to do some overdue work WHILE trying not to cry..becuase I suck at good byes. So I have decided that for now, I will just jump a head in my blog once again, to tell you what is happening right now. Right now I am reflecting on..THE most amazing 6 weeks of my life. I had the opportunity to do so many cool things that many can only dream of and I have realized how grateful I am for the life I have been given. All the while I am also making this experience more then just a ‘holiday’ but through this opportunity I am also furthering my education, not only literally in university terms but also about myself. Before I came here, I was lost. I didn’t know where I was in life, or what to make of my future. I had just graduated from MSU and felt off course without EL, the safe and easy road had come to a dead end. So then, I decided to go to South Africa, to continue my ‘unsure’ path in education of becoming a teacher. I came here still not knowing if I wanted to be a teacher, I just wanted to go to Africa, I was nervous that this experience was just an ‘excuse’ to travel – and maybe I didn’t deserve it, I hadn’t worked hard enough, or shown enough passion to be embarking on an experience as fantastic as thins. And now…its funny how things change, and how things can change you... I am sitting here now telling you that I can honestly see this in my future. On my last day of school, I sat there and laughed at myself, why, because I was suddenly sure of one thing. I was not just content, doing what I was doing but I was happy and enjoying it. I felt powerful in the classroom, in the sense that I was doing something that was appreciated, I didn’t need to be acknowledged for it, because I could feel and see that what I was doing felt right. I saw hard work; I saw motivation I saw attitudes change. I want to inspire people by teaching (I think) but I like working with others. Teaching; what exactly, I do not know, where exactly, I also don’t know but it’s a start. I don’t feel so lost anymore, I am not as scared of the future but now I am excited. I have a life to live and adventures to come. I want to see the world, I want to learn about other cultures and I want to become part of people’s lives, and leave a mark. I will never forget my students I had here in South Africa, and I will forever admire their desire to learn. While for some, the drive is not as strong as others, if you positively motivate and can prove the power of education, there is no way, and you can avoid success. Its not necessarily the 'classroom' education that has the power but the ability to focus and set your mind to something. It’s about finding passion, and interest a hobby and expanding on that. If you can find something that brings your joy, something that inspires you to wake up every (or almost every) morning - you have realized the power of education. Its commitment that’s important. Respect, for yourself and for others that’s important - and in turn that can take you to the moon. I did a lesson on proverbs, and finding the meaning and message behind what is being said, and that day in the classroom I learned a lot. As we sorted out the proverbs I asked the students to tell me what they 'meant' what is the proverb actually telling us. Then I asked them to put it in a real life context. That day I think I learned the most. It’s interesting to see what others think, how we all interpret things differently and how we then relate things to real life. What the students had to say was powerful and deeper then I would have expected. I realized that all my worries I had, about graduating and what I wanted to do with my life, were silly, I have to take each step as it comes, "don’t cross the bridge until you get to it" - they told me not to worry, and not to "cry over the spilled milk” clean it up and move on. Life is life and we can’t worry about the little tings, yet sometimes the little things are what make life worthwhile, like this lesson. "Make hay while the sun shines" - take advantage of your opportunities and don’t let life pass you by. This is what they taught me, and I realized that, that was exactly what I was doing here in South Africa. Living life to the fullest and taking advantages of all the opportunities that life has to give to you. If you don’t like something, change it. I know that’s easier said then done, but it is possible, anything is possible if you set your mind to it. "Rome wasn’t built in a day" ya know- success isn’t instant, but you cant win if ya don’t play! So play hard, work hard and love hard and life is worth every minute.
Africa for life!! Its not good bye, its see ya later!!
Ill work on the updates now!!
Love you all see you state side soon!
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Friday Island and FASCINATING birds and fossils woooo!!
And finally the time came for us to reunite after one long and hectic week of school!! I think we were all ready for this break! As we are now quite used to the South African time schedule, I was casually picked up around 10ish Saturday morning, July 30th. We picked up a few others and then we were on our way to Friday Island. On the way we stopped at the !khwa ttu san village, the San Cultural and educational center. Here we learned a lot about the lifestyle and language of the original Bushman people. We were given a language lesson is attempts to teach us some of the ‘clicks’ sounds that are used in their languages. Its pretty difficult, and it was pretty fun to hear a group of 16 just clicking and clocking trying to make the correct sounds. Our guide also found it amusing, but at least we tried. I brought home the pamphlet so I can show and try and teach some of you if you’d like to try! We were then taken on a tour, some walking and some driving around the village to see what the land was like, that these indigenous people inhibited and how they made a suitable living. We drove through the beautiful terrain seeing the large and vast landscape of grassland. We learned a little bit about tracking, which was a very important tool for these people. Villagers used the tracks when hunting to find food and also in knowing what animals were near by to help stay safe. The Buschman were very resourceful people and made use of every part of the animal in some way or another. Obviously the meat was cooked at eaten, the layer of fur in some animals was used to make clothing, the skin was helpful in building and up keeping of places of shelter, bones were made into weapons, tools and even jewelry. The women of the tribe would gather all the scraps and fins ways to carve, shape and create beautiful necklaces and beaded things. One particular resource was the ostrich egg. This extremely large, and actually the largest bird egg not only served as many meals but once emptied and cleaned out was commonly used as a water bottle for the hunters. It was large enough to carry a decent supply and was easy to transport/hide under a small bush if the hunters ever needed to run from a dangerous situation. Along the way we were shown what plants were edible or used as spices when making food. I tried one that tasted sweet kind of like candy! It was really good lol. Then we were taken to a traditional village of the forefathers. There was a circular formation of 5-6 small teepees huts all facing inwards surrounding a fire pit. When we got there a small fire was burning. It was explained that a fire was usually kept going at all times as a way to keep warm. The fire was tended to as needed as according to the daily temperature. Next to the fire was a large piece of animal fur filled with small tools and supplies used by the villagers. We saw traditional clothing, hunting bows and arrows, musical instruments, jewelry made of animal bone and cracked ostrich egg, and some other neat stuff. It was pretty fascinating to see what these villagers could make of the things that they had. They were indeed very handy and creative, working only with the natural resources they were provided. They found ways to die the jewelry, make thread, sharp tools clothing, and shelters. This completed our tour and we then headed back to Friday Island for dinner and the sunset!
Now let me just tell you that we have been spoiled with breath taking scenery and the most outstanding sunsets I have ever seen and tonight…even capped that! We headed to the beach while it was still light out and some crazzyy Americans decided to go swimming…I was not amongst them, instead I stood in as their photographer. I went in up to my ankles, till a big wave came – and that was quite enough, it was freezing, and when we, as in Americans from Michigan say freezing, its not a joke. We then walked along the beach playing on the shore and it the sand, enjoying life and taking tons and tons of picts of course. But honestly, the pictures don’t even do justice. It was something you just had to see, the picts are pretty fantastic tho. It’s really a cool thing to watch the sun set over the ocean and into the water. Once the sun hits the edge of the horizon, the rest sets so fast! It’s incredible! I can’t wait for these to upload! It came time for dinner but you couldn’t tear some of us away from the beach. Finally it was dark and we feasted! After dinner we all got drinks and hung out together, and roamed the beach. I have only once before in my life seen so many shooting stars in one night and that was in 2004 at Arches National Park in Utah. This was one of the most amazing and clearest skies I have ever seen. The coolest part is that the constipations that we could see are not ones that we can ever see from the northern hemisphere. You could even see the Milky Way! I don’t think that is something that I have ever been able to make out before. Mother nature is my home girl..this night was one of my favorites! Its pretty amazing how spectacular natural beauty can be, I think it’s the most exceptional beauty there is!
After a late night we woke up in the morning to pack up head out for a few more activities and then head back home. Our first stop was West Coast Fossil Park, where we looked at fossils…shocking! I don’t know if it was cause we, or I, was tired or maybe I don’t really think fossils are that cool…. but this was BOOORINGGGG! Ha well I mean some of it was interesting but for the most part I think its so hard to believe from finding tiny little pieces of ‘rock’ that are turtle shell or whatever and then somehow they created a shot necked giraffe that once lived long a go….ummm ya, not for me. Lol so enough about that, we then went to farmstall, where there are cool birds and white tigers. We were supposed to see the tiger show but shockingly we were late and missed it. So instead we looked at some pretty cool birds for a time and I played on the sea-saw. We left to go get dinner, when Stephanie (the red van) ran out of gas…little did we know this was just the beginning of a long series of problems good old steph was about to have…But not to worry, good old Daphnie (the white van) came to the rescue and we were on our way in no time. We then we headed to Table View beach for a reflection. It was super windy and the tide was getting high, so we hade it super fast. Some nice words word said about the week past, Corvell reminded us to do our homework (womp womp) and we prayed for a positive (short) week to come looking forward to our long weekend ahead of us and in the mean time to keep our heads high, fight through the difficulties and learn as much as we could!
I got home not too late hung out with the fam and headed to bed early to start of a new week right with lots of energy! Monday was going to be an important day, we were having the advisors of the curriculum committee come in to evaluate the progress of the school and to make sure everything was on track and that Brooklands was staying successful as it had been and should be!
More to come soon!
Erin
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
'Miss Erin'
Ok soo…I just had THE BEST WEEKEND EVER (check the new prof pict for a spoiler alert!) but im afraid if I tell you about it now it will ruin what I still have to update you on worse I wont get to all the updates…so on my account of procrastination I apologize for the extra suspense, its killing me to, I just want to share all my stories, lesson learned…however it is motivating me to update better at the same time soo here goes….
I believe I left off right at the beginning of week 2 of teaching, our first and actually only full 5-day week (maybe I can get this whole week done in one post, bare with me here..)
This long week began Monday, July 25th. Every Monday the school day starts off with an assembly. All the students proceed into the, ‘forum’ they call it, which would be like the auditorium or atrium. In this school it is a big open area in the center of the school. The learners line up by grade and sit together on the floor. There is then some announcements made by the principal, pertaining to school events or congratulations to be sent out to school teams and such and then an introduction is made for a motivational speaker. This week was pastor Matthew. He spoke of passion an excellence. He message to the students that ‘good’ is not good enough. You must want to be THE BEST, to go the extra mile to achieve excellence. To love life and be passionate about what it is that we do, to try your best and even better, because there is always room for success. Whether it was attention grabbing or motivational at all for the students, he defiantly grabbed my attention. I was motivated by his speech, most in particular about finding passion. This is something that I have been struggling with and I think that this trip has helped a lot. I have learned that it is ok to be undetermined about what or what you want you life to go, but as long as you take each step with passion, and devotion and out not just 100% into what you are doing but truly going that extra mile and putting in 110% percent, you cannot avoid success. No matter what route you choose to take, if it is taken with a stride of passion, it will lead you somewhere. So for now, im still not sure where life will take me or what I might end up doing, in my future, but for now I must do what ever is it I am doing to the fullest. I have a friend that once told me, that it’s not worth doing something if your not going to do it 100%. I knew he was right but that it was just a matter of time until I realized how true that statement was. If you think about it, why waste your time, if your not trying. What’s the point. If your going to run a race, you don’t do it to come in last, you don’t hike a mountain to only go half way, you don’t apply for a job just to go to the interview, and you don’t wake up every day just to lie in bed. Make something of yourself, so something with the body god gave you, have fun, find something you like, and build on it. Ultimately it will lead you to a happy successful life. It doesn’t matter the amount of your paycheck but the value of joy you get doing what your doing.
As I am writing this I am realizing that honestly, I don’t wake every morning thinking these thoughts, sometimes I don't want to move and sometimes I am so frustrated by my confusion of life that I just want to lay there and do nothing. And its ok to have days like that, we are only human. But what’s important to know and remember is that there is something out there waiting for you, someone out there waiting for you, to hear your story to tell you theirs. The best way to get stared, as I have heard so many times and truly realized while being in this country is that you must look and listen to the world and people around you. Think and see for yourself, wonder and ask questions. Explore, and soon enough once you find yourself, you will find happiness. Im still working on it and most likely will be my whole life – but that’s the joy of the journey. Anyways, im getting carried away, but as you can see, this motivational speaker really got to me. When he was done speaking we said a few prayers and the students were then dismissed except the grade sixes.
Something interesting happened now, as the rest of their schools went to their respective classrooms the grade 6s were split up into their different leaning levels, 1 being the lowest and 4 being the highest. It was interesting to see how many were in each group. It was actually a decent split, however – there were the most 1s out of any group. This grouping was done publicly, and some students were called out on the spot for either dropping or going up a level. This was shocking to me as you would never see anything like this in the US. In the States, we are very private about grades and learning levels. I think that for the most part I agree with that however, you could see the looks of embarrassment on some of the students faces, perhaps wishing that they now tried harder throughout the second and third term. Grade 6 is a very important year here is South Africa as it is one of the national testing grades. At the end of the year, students take a math and literacy test and their shores are publicly released in the paper. The passing marks are recorded and then evaluated to see the progress and status of the school. Our school, Brooklands Primary, is noted to be continuously one of the highest-ranking schools.
To be honest though, this seems like a waste of valuable class time as the students were just standing around and nothing was really accomplished except that the students who dropped levels were reprimanded. No plan was created as to how to help them, they were just yelled at, and it seemed like they were trying to embarrass them and then, that’s all. After about a half hours time, if not more, the students then went back to their classrooms. Nothing valuable to the students was done in that time and so much time was taken away form the first period that we didn’t have must time to do anything with the students. throughout the day I led a math lesson for the maths intervention class, going over problems and helping them work through it, and then helping then to figure them out. I was surprised by the confusion of the class, as the material seemed to be something they should be quite familiar with. But I did my best to logically work through the problems in various ways to think about the problems to help them in the future.
This was a long day we stayed after to help some student with reading and practicing for the Eistedford reading competition and then finally headed home. I didn’t do much in the evening I was pretty tired (attributing to the no blogging lol). Marena, Charles, Randall and I went out in search of a place to eat dinner as no one wanted to cook lol. We finally ended up at a Mugg and Bean and I had a delicious fajita for dinner!
The following day, Tuesday the 26 of July was a big day. We started off the day by going over equivalent fractions with the students, as this was a common area in which they seem to be struggling. To help them I used story problems and drew examples on the board. I am a big advocate of visual and hands on activities I think this really helps the students grasp ideas. I then gave the students spelling a spelling and dictation test, using vocabulary words from a story they had been working on about space exploration. I was somewhat surprised by the number of mistakes that I found among the students, especially those in which English is their first language. I am not sure what attributes to this, however it was something to note. Today was also the big Eistedford day, that we had been practicing and preparing for all last week for. The Eistedford is a reading competition, I can’t remember if I already told you abut this but I fee like I have. Anyways the students have been working really hard and today was the grade 6 poems. This is where students demonstrate their reading ability, as a performance to an audience. The students are judged on their presentation, inflection, and comfortability with the audience, connection to the audience, ability to appear natural and over all performance. This is the first time that Brooklands Primary has ever participated in anything like this before so we didn’t really know what to expect. I helped prepare the students poems the best that I could, and from there we would learn better for the following competition and next year. The grading was as follows 90 and up was highest honours, 80-89 was honours, 70-79 was honorable mention and 60-69 was merit. We had one student receive honours and the other three received honorable mention. For this being their very first time and not knowing what to expect, they did extremely well. The judges were strict, yet their markings were helpful and gave good pointers for improvement. I was very proud of them! it was funny, I felt like their actual teacher, or a proud parent as they were reading. It was so cute! I was nervous/excited for them before their performance and then no matter their markings, I was proud of them, as long as they had fun, it was worth it and a good learning opportunity. It takes a lot of courage to perform a poem that you must memories and then act out in front of an audience you do not know, judges and other competitors. Having these feelings, excitement and happiness for my students started to make me realize even more, that I am liking what I am doing. I want to help the children, I want them to succeed and mostly I want them to have fun doing it. If I can be a positive influence in any way, it makes me feel like I am doing something beneficial and making an impact. After a super long day, working 7-7 we returned home exhausted and starving. I we pick up some burgers on the way home and let me tell you I have never been so excited for McDonalds in my life! New fav is the spicy Cajun sandwich, no Wendy’s, but it’ll do.
On Wednesday, July 27th Corvell came to check on us. We have had a few days now in the school and enough to see drastically how some things are different. One thing to note is the difference in allocation and use of time, time management is defiantly something that can be worked on. The disruptive behavior of the students forces the educators to take time out of the day, yelling at them to be quiet and pay attention thus taking away from voluble learning time. wow, I really sound like a teacher now huh, but its totally true and annoying. if the kid doesn’t that to be there, then leave, if they are not getting the attention they want, don’t give them negative attention. I remember getting kicked out of class was the worst and made me even more bored then being in class. you can’t feed into their negativity, just remove from the classroom, and if they want attention bad enough and realize that they want to learn, hopefully, their effort and behavior will change. in turn, the students do not pay attention and thus the teaching is less effective. A common theme that some of us have noticed is the lack of respect for education that the students seems to have. It is not as apparent in my classroom as it is in the high school, however, you can see the students’ work and in their attitudes that some of them just do not care. Although, I feel that at this age, the students are influenced quite easily, be it at home, among their friends and peer or by their teachers. This is why, especially in countries and areas like this, that it is so important for the teachers to have positive im pacts on their students. many of the students do not come from positive home environments, do not have the ability to express themselves freely, and are not optimistically motivated by the activities that surround their home life. This results in a negative attitude towards school, and the impression that education is worthless. As much as I myself have struggled with school sometimes and as many times as I have wanted to quit or take a break, education truly is the key. It many not necessarily be ‘college’ or ‘university’ education however it is the idea of commitment and hard work that the students needs to develop and become passionate about to become successful. They need to find something that interest them, something they can put forth effort towards, learn more about and become an expert. If its cars, bikes, building, music…anything, it takes time, passion and practice to be the best. And it is all derived from knowledge and education about such things. If the students look at it this way, maybe it will help. Talking to Corvell was really helpful and he encouraged us to keep a positive attitude, and that no matter what, even if we felt like we weren’t making a difference or helping at all, there is at least one student out there, who strives, and desires for more then what they have. Many of them see us and realize, that one-day they want to go to America, and seeing that we are able to come here, help motivate them and ensure them, that with hard work anything is possible. One of my students told me that is was her dream to come to New York one day. She asks me all about it, what’s it like, what are the people like…many of the students ask me a lot about what America is like. I tell them that it’s a great place that they can all come to one day, if they work hard enough. I tell them that they better remember me, and when they do make it to America, to find me, call me, and tell me their story. I hope they make it, and I truly believe that some of them will.
After so much evaluation and just a few days I have realized that maybe I even do want to go and study curriculum and planning of education. I find it so interesting the way a day is structured here verses the way a day is structured in America along with the use of homework, or evaluation. The students are given a lot of work to do at home or in class, however there is little time to actually then evaluate that work, which in turn makes it worthless, especially for the students who are doing the work incorrectly. For example, I was looking at some sentences the students had written using the vocabulary words for the week. Many of them struggled in matching the subject if the sentence, he, she, you, we, to the verb, run, jump, play, read, and thus were confusing tenses and not making grammatically correct sentences, or the students was simply just not using the vocabulary word correctly. I was able to see what the student was trying to say, and did my best at finding a way to explain how to match the various parts of a sentence. However, English in a tricky language, with auxiliary verbs (am, is, are, was and so on) that can change the tense of a sentence, while not conjugating the actual verb of the sentence. I was even confusing myself. This is where more evaluating or grading by the teacher could be done. Or, because many of the students do not do their work at home, teachers could possibly try to have more interactive activities in class so their work can be better evaluated and problems can be addressed, it is common that the mistakes one student makes many others may be confused about as well. This is where I also grow an interest in curriculum. It would be interesting to evaluate curriculums across the globe to see how different schools in different parts of the world deal with and teach particular subjects, how they structure the day and how much time they allocate to different things. I think having a more structured curriculum, that focused more on core subjects, instead of the 9 (I think) subjects that they focus on now in primary school in South Africa, could address many of the issues caused in math and literacy in particular. This would allow more time to be dedicated to these subjects.
Another issue we touched on a lot was that of discipline and classroom management. While not it my class, some of my peers have been having a difficult time seeing and dealing with the way teachers and administration handle behavioral issues. It is much different from the US, punishment is stricter and expectations of the students are also different. The style and behavior of the students is much more ‘traditional’ or old school then what you would see in the States. The students wear uniforms, stand when a teacher or adult enters the room and welcome them to the class. Teachers are addressed by ‘miss’ or ‘sir’ and students are expected to use that title all times, otherwise, it is disrespectful. The students line up boys and girls and always allow the girls line to go first. Teachers also have different expectation of quiet then we do. Americans focus a lot of group work, which is not so much recognized here. The noise level is always expected to be silent. Silence is golden here. This is just something to note and observe. I am really enjoying, although sometimes are more difficult then others, to see how different the schools are and in what ways. It had been an eye opener and a great learning experience.
All in all, we realized and recognized how important it is to be a positive influence in the students lives and they may not receive that positive attention at home. Kids will be kids and most often that means that they want attention. Therefore, if they receive attention when they act out, they will continue to act out. however, if we compliment their good behavior and give them positive attention for their good behavior and good participation, it is possible that this could trigger more positive energy and better behavior. While it cannot be said that this will work in all cases and with all students, it is a good approach to take, showing the students that their negative behavior and poor attitudes are not getting them anywhere.
It’s funny, because I was totally one of those students growing up that acted out and talked back to my teachers and when I look at my students here I can see myself. I can see the ones that are just like me, they are bored, and want attention. They are not being challenged enough. So they act out, to get attention from their peer and teachers. I feel like I can see right up their sleeves and know what they are going to do. I sort of feel like this gives me an upper hand and I can address the issue before it gets out of control. Its important to not be their enemy, you don’t want the students to hate you, you want them to respect you, and the only way to gain that respect, is to give that respect. Talk to your students, get to know them, fins out what they like and what they don’t like. This can help build interactive activities and things to keep them busy while still educating them. the most important rile of a teacher, is to make learning fun!
Moving on to Thursday July 28th…
(im getting tired of writing and this is getting long so im prob going to start being brief, if you have anything you want you want me to talk more about..comment about it)
…was another long day. This week we have been preparing for the visits of the committee to evaluate the school and its progress thus far. So we have been editing lesson plans, making activities, grading books and so on. during the day I worked on some natural science worksheets and food chart activities for the students to do. I also did some more walking around and checking of work, I finished looking over some sentences I had them write the previous day, and had some of them redo it after I gave them feedback. What I have been able to notice is that this attention I have been giving to the students, evaluating and explaining to the students what they are confused on, and how to fix it, actually triggers them to work harder. I can see them trying to fix their mistakes and want to be right. They call me over all at once to see if they ‘got it right this time’. This makes me happy and I realize that all they need is that extra little boost of confidence. They all have the ability to lean it is just, the motivation and effort that many of them are lacking. However, the problem is that so many of them need a lot of guidance because they are not properly understanding the material, the issue with this is that there is simply not enough time to be able to go through each students work and spend that much time individually with each of them. what could be beneficial however, would be more group work and peer evaluating, perhaps. I think that it is good for teachers, especially in this environment, to try and be most effective with class time because you do not know what kid of conditions or atmosphere lies at home and thus possibly lessening the likely of completing work outside of school.
And to cap off this busy busy day I stayed after to help a few more students with their poems for the Eistedford and then we went to another Eistedford competition. This one was the unprepared reading..in Afrikaans. Haha I couldn’t understand a thing..every student was given a passage to read and had 5 minutes to prepare it..each reading was the exact same. I think it was probably better that I didn’t understand what they were saying or it might have gotten old fast. All in all there were 2 girls that competed and they did very well! We were proud. When we finally came home we ordered a pizza and passed out, awaiting Friday, finally to wrap up one hectic week!
TGIF!
Today I finally made a seating chart of the classroom. between the names I cannot pronounce and 3 different grade 6 classes I could not remember their names for the life o me. So finally I made a seating chart as best I could for each class! This was a big accomplishment. We also did some more grammar and worked on more sentences. I graded and marked books, and worked more on the food chain and ecosystem. We did a lot more preparation for the advisors on Monday. It had been a long week, and we headed home for a relaxing evening.
That night Marena and Charles took me to their friends Kelsey and Keith’s house. This house was b-e-a-utiful!!! Built into the side of the mountain over looking the city of Cape Town…absolutely stunning! I could not believe my eyes. The city lights look incredible and then dropped off at the shore. You could see some tiny specks of light in the middle of all the blackness, these were boats out on the sea. Each level of the house had a balcony and look out point. WOW!!! I cant really even say much more, but I neeeeeed the mountains.!! I know that is what I am going to miss most about this place! It is so beautiful I don’t even want to think about leaving! Im having such a great time, but I am excited to come home to tell every one all about it, reflect on my blogging, show you picts and see what more I have to share!
Anyways, im just as exhausted from writing all of this as I was by the end of the week and its getting late and tomorrow (Wednesday aug 10th) I start my last week of school, only 3 days left :(. So I ought to get to bed. Sorry if this got choppy at the end, im not proof reading and I just wanted to get out as much to you as I could. Like I said any questions or want to talk/know more about anything I said PLEASE let me know, id love it because if I wrote to you everything I was thinking or seeing it would drive you crazy and be 7000 pages long! Hope to hear from some of you!
Goeie Nag!
Miss Erin
p.s. only a weekend, a week of school and another weekend till im caught up!! Yay me!
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