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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