This post is predicated by a fascinating discussion in the conference today about game playing.
The research presented was some really useful work being done in remote areas of Australia where staff turnover is high, student attendance is very low and every teacher who rocks up changes stuff in order to 'make a difference' (cue: note to self on this one...)
Those schools that are functioning relatively well in this environment have begun adopting a discourse of 'the game' whereby they make the most simple actions and behaviours of going to school explicit to their students and communities as the rules of the game "Going to School" and then are consistent about those rules. For further information, read the paper here. It's really good.
This notion of game playing really resonates with me, but not in the way intended in the paper. Here are 3 examples of games I've encountered that are worth sharing.
Game 1
My own offering to today's conversation involved the most strange and alarming phenomenon that I first encountered at the school regarding my students' books.
For my students, the main function and attribute of their book was form: it must be neat, it must be beautiful, it must not have scratchings or incorrect answers or messy work or mistakes in it.
Rough work was done on ANY other available surface: torn out papers from homework diaries, toilet paper, the wall, the desk, you name it. Anywhere else except in the book.
So when I insisted that they show me their working inline they were--initially--horrified. "But Miss, that will mess up my book!" Or, even worse (lord forbid) I came around to check how they are doing and wanted to do an example with them together in their books so that they could watch good mathematics being modelled and retain the example for future reference...
"NO MISS NOT IN MY BOOK! NOT WITH RED PEN!" <thrusts a pencil into my hand>
The only red allowed in the book is a tick. A nice red tick. And if I don't provide it as timeously as the students want, they put it in themselves, irrespective of whether the work is right or not.
*tick*
I was boggled. Bemused. And disturbed at the same time. Because there is only one place that my students could've learnt this particular ritual, and that was in their previous classroom.
What on earth could possibly conduce the teachers to only ever tick, or the students to never show their working and scratch around thus for any surface (including, might I add, themselves) on which to perform their calculations?
To economists my answer will seem obvious: incentives. The Rules of the Game manifest in different ways. There are the 'official' rules of the game. And then there are the real rules, the ones that the rewards, penalties and pressures incentivize. The Rules of the Game might 'officially' state that teachers need to check all their students books regularly. But if a teacher is being told that books will be randomly inspected by the visiting authorities and each sum must be marked, well the incentive is to do as few questions as possible to alleviate the assessment burden (any sane mathematics teacher will tell you it is nigh on impossible to assess every question that every student ever does. That's where self-assessment comes in).
Also to alleviate the burden of marking, we go old-school: ticks and crosses against the final answer only. Working, misconceptions, the process of calculation count for nothing. Only the answer. *tick*.
The result is a charade: a dance of shadows where teachers act out something they call 'teaching' and students act out something they call 'learning'. Learner copies off the board and then waits. Teacher comes along and goes 'tick'. Inspector comes along and goes 'very good! Beautiful books'. Teacher smiles. Student smiles.
Nothing approximating the igniting of mathematical understanding has happened at all.
Game 2
Another interesting example of the Game. Who would've thought that a potential explanation for principals admitting students into their already over-full schools could be linked to salary scales?
Size of school -> Principal's payscale.
So here we have a payscale system that is trying to acknowledge those principals who are running schools of 1200 kids and that what they do is harder than running a school of, say, 300 kids. And that's fair enough. But the distorted behaviour that manifests is profound.
Game 3
The final interesting example comes down to advisor visits. I was really not very happy about my advisor visits (euphemism of the millenium). I was particularly not happy about being made to sign their report to acknowledge they had 'advised' me. They came on a day when I had no free time to chat with them, at a time when I was teaching all day, with no room for negotiation. They arrived late and then were frustrated when they had to leave late.
[It should be added that this rather rushed engagement was the result of a slightly tense interaction in which many emails over a period of about 5 weeks requesting an amicable visit went unanswered. I think they got upset when we contacted the powers-that-be and asked why we were not getting any responses to our requests for help.]
No effort was made to engage with what I have tried to do for remedial interventions with the students. The interventions were just 'me going off curriculum'. They poured over my files while I was in class and then I kind of got it with both barrels about 'not sticking to the pace-setter'. My protests of the students' weakness and knowledge gaps were met with the response "That doesn't matter. You must stick to the pace setter. These kids will keep you behind if you give them half a chance".
Give them half the chance? Perhaps them not getting half a chance might explain why they are in such a pickle in the first place? I'm not joking here: on the notes they gave to me they have literally written "do not let "don't understand" get in the way". I've been officially instructed to not worry if my students don't get it.
At this point in the hurried meeting I really was restraining my desperate urge to either pack up laughing hysterically or punch someone in the face.
But off we set on this game. They talked at me, s-l-o-w-l-y, showing me in monosyllabic terms the most unpedagogically sound mechanisms for teaching fractions I have ever seen, assuming that I didn't know how to teach this level of mathematics. I nodded, steam coming out of my ears, wishing they would go away or make an effort to get to know what I've done, what I can do and what I'm trying to do and actually advise me. No such luck. We just played the game. The Box-Ticking Game. Educator X has been 'corrected' and has been made to sign a document stating as much. School Y has been visited and can be ticked on the list. We've done our jobs here. This school is now 'right'.
I think it was John Maynard Keynes who said something about creating employment by paying people to dig holes and paying other people to fill them in again. This really sums up to me what our education system currently is. One very large, elaborate, expensive charade, a game to keep a few hundred thousand people employed. Which it does very well. But in the immortal words of Blackadder, there's only one teeny tiny problem....
It was bollocks.
Wednesday, 3 April 2013
Tuesday, 2 April 2013
The difference between theory and practice is...
...that in theory there is no difference and in practice there is!
In about an hour I'm heading off to Seapoint to register for the 7th Mathematics Education in Society conference where I'll be presenting my Masters work and getting the opportunity to gather opinions and insights from people whose work I've been following for 5 years now. I'm rather excited!
More importantly, I've just reread the (very short! damn word count limits!) summary of my work I submitted ages ago as my conference application. I can't say I'm happy with it, but it was a furious click-send-at-23:59 submission so I shouldn't be surprised.
For those unaware, my Masters thesis is about teachers beliefs about mathematics teaching and language and how these things interact in the classroom. I'll do a follow up post about why very few South African children learn in their mother tongue and what implications research is showing from this (I'll delve into some of Neville Alexander's writing on language and political and educational emancipation to illustrate the point in said forth-coming blog. The topic deserves tomes of its own). Suffice to say for now, there is a very strong correlation between mathematics attainment and language of teaching and learning in SA. Of course, language of teaching and learning also proxies for many other variables that are known to have an effect on students' mathematical attainment, such as socio-economic circumstances, access to physical resources such as solid schools, textbooks and ICT equipment, access to human resources such as well-trained teachers etc. and this all comes saddled with the moribund gamut that is South African political and social history. But there's definitely something to the language variable on its own: across the world, students who learn in their home language learn better. It seems an obvious thing to say, but you'd be surprised at how controversial it is.
So I spent a month in a very rural school up in the Eastern Cape observing teachers and chatting to them about their thoughts about the role of language in their classrooms. Unsurprisingly, they didn't think it mattered much, and this is not an uncommon response. People think mathematics is symbols and numbers... the least language-dependent of the subjects. Not at all. Firstly mathematics is often described as a language itself. Choose a random textbook off the shelf and turn to the introduction. 10:1 says the first paragraph mentions something like "Mathematics is a language that... " or "Mathematics is the language which...". And like all languages, you learn what the NEW word/symbol/signifier means IN YOUR OWN LANGUAGE so that you can translate: attach meaning to the new squiggle on the page in terms you already know. What does "<" mean? What does "!" mean? How do we use the word "any" in mathematics and how is it different to the way we use it in the super market? Never mind overloaded terms such as "element" or "power". And then there's the discourse: how we talk mathematics. The way we rationalize our responses, structure logical arguments. A lovely example is Goldbach's conjecture (I had to look that one up because I always get it confused with Riemann's hypothesis. Oh well...). Goldbach's conjecture is still unsolved and is very easily stated. Something like this:
Every even integer greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two primes.
Simple huh? But every word is used in a mathematical way. The word "every". The word "expressed". The word "prime". Mastering such overloaded lexica AS WELL AS the style/register of mathematics is difficult enough in your own language, never mind a second language, and certainly not in a language that is--for all intensive purposes--foreign.
So when our children are learning mathematics in English but they speak isiXhosa 90% of the time, well, making real meaning is very difficult. This combines with rote learning, teachers who are unconfident of their subject content knowledge and little linguistic resources to use to acquire English in order to acquire mathematics. The textbooks are in English. The exams are in English. And a kid who gets a question like "b) Hence, determine the roots of the new equation if p=0" ... well, you can guess what happens.
But I'm not happy with my conference submission for a couple of reasons:
In particular, the crappy word count doesn't give space to unpack and explore problematic terms such as "rural" or "poorly trained" teachers. When I describe the village as "homogenously isiXhosa speaking", well, it doesn't feel quite right: such a whopping big generalization is not au fait in academia. Grr... now I'll have to waste 5 of my 10 minutes of presentation time sounding defensive while I qualify what I meant when I wrote that near-midnight-rushed-submission. I promise the quality of the work is better than the submission! Promise!
Meantime, here's hoping I'll get to really chew the fat over some of the things troubling me about the research. Like validity issues around measuring and studying beliefs (ouch!).
One positive thing though. My work in my new school over the last 3 months has confirmed the major trajectory of the research. What teachers believe about their work is one of the core fundamental variables in determining what they are willing to try and how they are willing to change their practice. And effecting change in teacher practice is probably the single biggest thing we can do to improve our rather defunct education system. Connecting theory with practice! Here's hoping that comes through in the conference...
In about an hour I'm heading off to Seapoint to register for the 7th Mathematics Education in Society conference where I'll be presenting my Masters work and getting the opportunity to gather opinions and insights from people whose work I've been following for 5 years now. I'm rather excited!
More importantly, I've just reread the (very short! damn word count limits!) summary of my work I submitted ages ago as my conference application. I can't say I'm happy with it, but it was a furious click-send-at-23:59 submission so I shouldn't be surprised.
For those unaware, my Masters thesis is about teachers beliefs about mathematics teaching and language and how these things interact in the classroom. I'll do a follow up post about why very few South African children learn in their mother tongue and what implications research is showing from this (I'll delve into some of Neville Alexander's writing on language and political and educational emancipation to illustrate the point in said forth-coming blog. The topic deserves tomes of its own). Suffice to say for now, there is a very strong correlation between mathematics attainment and language of teaching and learning in SA. Of course, language of teaching and learning also proxies for many other variables that are known to have an effect on students' mathematical attainment, such as socio-economic circumstances, access to physical resources such as solid schools, textbooks and ICT equipment, access to human resources such as well-trained teachers etc. and this all comes saddled with the moribund gamut that is South African political and social history. But there's definitely something to the language variable on its own: across the world, students who learn in their home language learn better. It seems an obvious thing to say, but you'd be surprised at how controversial it is.
So I spent a month in a very rural school up in the Eastern Cape observing teachers and chatting to them about their thoughts about the role of language in their classrooms. Unsurprisingly, they didn't think it mattered much, and this is not an uncommon response. People think mathematics is symbols and numbers... the least language-dependent of the subjects. Not at all. Firstly mathematics is often described as a language itself. Choose a random textbook off the shelf and turn to the introduction. 10:1 says the first paragraph mentions something like "Mathematics is a language that... " or "Mathematics is the language which...". And like all languages, you learn what the NEW word/symbol/signifier means IN YOUR OWN LANGUAGE so that you can translate: attach meaning to the new squiggle on the page in terms you already know. What does "<" mean? What does "!" mean? How do we use the word "any" in mathematics and how is it different to the way we use it in the super market? Never mind overloaded terms such as "element" or "power". And then there's the discourse: how we talk mathematics. The way we rationalize our responses, structure logical arguments. A lovely example is Goldbach's conjecture (I had to look that one up because I always get it confused with Riemann's hypothesis. Oh well...). Goldbach's conjecture is still unsolved and is very easily stated. Something like this:
Every even integer greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two primes.
Simple huh? But every word is used in a mathematical way. The word "every". The word "expressed". The word "prime". Mastering such overloaded lexica AS WELL AS the style/register of mathematics is difficult enough in your own language, never mind a second language, and certainly not in a language that is--for all intensive purposes--foreign.
So when our children are learning mathematics in English but they speak isiXhosa 90% of the time, well, making real meaning is very difficult. This combines with rote learning, teachers who are unconfident of their subject content knowledge and little linguistic resources to use to acquire English in order to acquire mathematics. The textbooks are in English. The exams are in English. And a kid who gets a question like "b) Hence, determine the roots of the new equation if p=0" ... well, you can guess what happens.
But I'm not happy with my conference submission for a couple of reasons:
In particular, the crappy word count doesn't give space to unpack and explore problematic terms such as "rural" or "poorly trained" teachers. When I describe the village as "homogenously isiXhosa speaking", well, it doesn't feel quite right: such a whopping big generalization is not au fait in academia. Grr... now I'll have to waste 5 of my 10 minutes of presentation time sounding defensive while I qualify what I meant when I wrote that near-midnight-rushed-submission. I promise the quality of the work is better than the submission! Promise!
Meantime, here's hoping I'll get to really chew the fat over some of the things troubling me about the research. Like validity issues around measuring and studying beliefs (ouch!).
One positive thing though. My work in my new school over the last 3 months has confirmed the major trajectory of the research. What teachers believe about their work is one of the core fundamental variables in determining what they are willing to try and how they are willing to change their practice. And effecting change in teacher practice is probably the single biggest thing we can do to improve our rather defunct education system. Connecting theory with practice! Here's hoping that comes through in the conference...
Friday, 29 March 2013
Revelations in layers of humanity
Over end-of-term drinks, our principal quite rightly related an anecdote all teachers can relate to. It's the response one gets from people when you answer their "so what do you do?" question. They always say:
"oh, that must be SO rewarding!"
We can tell you now, categorically, that many, many, many days it is not. When you are constantly fighting with rude obnoxious teenagers who don't care how much they ignore or upset you... "rewarding" is not the word that comes to mind. This ain't gardening you know, despite what all those cheesy motivational posters might say.
There are many reasons to dislike my job. I would, however, like to describe one big reason why I LOVE my job.
I ADORE my job because of the extra layers of humanity it has revealed to me in people so very different to me. Whether these revelations are indicative of an unhealthy mindset I have/had or what not, I have yet to figure out. But this much I know: I don't see car guards or wire-flower sellers any more. I don't see domestic workers or taxi drivers. I don't see security guards or Checkers bag packers or trolley pushers or garbage men.
I now can't help but see the fathers and mothers of my children. These are the parents of my students: the ones who I call to help me when their teen is being a brat. The ones who come to talk with me about their child and we smile and greet and share tea. The ones like Bongi who, on seeing a class being rude to me, stormed in as the angry matriarch she is and put the students in their place pronto quick. Like Clive, who always asks how I am before we start talking about how to make sure his son comes to school. Like Angel, who always supports my corrective measures towards either of her sons and calls me 'her child' and invites me into her home.
Thank you, my heart-breaking-exhausting-soul-dessicating job for these friends and these insights. My life is richer for the connection and the personhood I can now see and feel in these strangers I encounter every day.
"oh, that must be SO rewarding!"
We can tell you now, categorically, that many, many, many days it is not. When you are constantly fighting with rude obnoxious teenagers who don't care how much they ignore or upset you... "rewarding" is not the word that comes to mind. This ain't gardening you know, despite what all those cheesy motivational posters might say.
There are many reasons to dislike my job. I would, however, like to describe one big reason why I LOVE my job.
I ADORE my job because of the extra layers of humanity it has revealed to me in people so very different to me. Whether these revelations are indicative of an unhealthy mindset I have/had or what not, I have yet to figure out. But this much I know: I don't see car guards or wire-flower sellers any more. I don't see domestic workers or taxi drivers. I don't see security guards or Checkers bag packers or trolley pushers or garbage men.
I now can't help but see the fathers and mothers of my children. These are the parents of my students: the ones who I call to help me when their teen is being a brat. The ones who come to talk with me about their child and we smile and greet and share tea. The ones like Bongi who, on seeing a class being rude to me, stormed in as the angry matriarch she is and put the students in their place pronto quick. Like Clive, who always asks how I am before we start talking about how to make sure his son comes to school. Like Angel, who always supports my corrective measures towards either of her sons and calls me 'her child' and invites me into her home.
Thank you, my heart-breaking-exhausting-soul-dessicating job for these friends and these insights. My life is richer for the connection and the personhood I can now see and feel in these strangers I encounter every day.
Thursday, 28 March 2013
The trick is to keep breathing
Today was our last day at school for the first term. I have here a list of things to blog about which has been growing and growing for the last 3 weeks and never managed to get around to writing about any of it. It's a pity really: they are all good topics and, I think, quite interesting. Some included issues such as our contact and working with social workers and support NGOs to support our students with their issues at home, my first meeting with curriculum advisors, an incident with a student which got a bit physical, the interview process of finding new teachers to fill the vacancies left by those who have left us (and along with this, the loss of our second teacher), my first discussion about religion with my students, amongst others. I'll do my best to briefly touch on these and others in a summative blog post, otherwise I'll run the risk of putting you to sleep with a blog post longer than my arm.
But first, the end of term. The sense of profound relief is indescribable. I've lost count of the number of times this term I've thought I just can't go on. Honestly, I'm not sure how we all have. I'd be lying if I sort of nodded, smiled and said 'yeah, but that's how I roll: I'm tough like that'. Bulls@£t. I have wanted to run to my mummy and cry like a baby... and I have (except it was my husband). I have lost my cool with the kids, more than once (and paid the price for it). I have sworn and cursed and driven too fast and drunk too much in response to the stress. So no heroes here. I'm pleased to say I have not lashed out at my students--this is just not something I think I have in me. But boy oh boy, there are a few who I would secretly smile at if they tripped and fell. And I don't like this in myself. It doesn't last too long, I'm pleased to say: for the most part, I'm really starting to like my kids, even the naughty ones. But in the heat of the moment...
How have we done? On reflection, kind of ok I think. We have done some fun activities in the last few days to keep the kids engaged and in school: our attendance hasn't been great towards the end of term (maybe 70-75%?) but I suspect this is better than average at this time of year. We had the fight of maintaining the learning after the end-of-term assessments, an event that was another window into what our students considered 'normal'--the idea that we would teach after these assessments was met with much anger and confusion. Our students are truly used to their teachers marking in lessons while the students run amok. Some responded to the rational argument about lost lessons accumulating, others just had to be told straight. And of course, the other side of this struggle has been as teachers to not succumb to the temptation to utilize this expectation from the students to make our lives easier. Sure, we could've marked during lessons. I'd probably have gotten more than 6 hours of sleep a night if I had. Tempting? of course it is. Some of us held out better than others, but we were all tempted to do this. In this week we have had a day of 'sporty stuff', including obstacle courses, sack races, soccer, netball, tug-of-war (we broke a 2 inch thick rope! I truly wish I'd seen all the grade 8s fall to the floor simultaneously >:) ) and a treasure hunt. The kids loved it. They went bos!! (SA slang for crazy). Loud, fast, furious, and crazy! Their sense of being able to lose is non-existent: the rule of the day was if you won, it wasn't cheating, but if the other team won, it was. If you didn't help your class cheat, you were 'fixing it'. We all shook our heads in disbelief at the approach to competition that the children took. If you asked the teachers, we'd say the day was nuts. But if you asked the kids, they would say it was awesome. At the end of the day, they didn't want to leave. 'nuff said.
There's never a dull moment you know. If we're not liaising with social services about situations of potential abuse, we're reeling from the loss of another teacher, or watching our kids start a car wash business in the car park, or wondering what to do about our students who eat the eugenia berries around the playground and sit in class farting intolerably as a result. Only just today, at our end-of-term awards ceremony, this small girl in my grade 8 class, a combination of shy and slightly chatty/cheeky, dressed up in her uxhentso traditional wear and transformed before our eyes into the most unbelievable 4 foot high umbongi (praise singer)!! She let forth in a huge voice--other-worldly in nature--a torrent of praise in isiXhosa to our headteacher, with her fly-switch of grass and her painted face, singing his praises for believing in them, for seeing a future for them, for coming to the community and building a school and how grateful the children were. The response from the staff and students alike was explosive: I have never jabbed my fist in the air as I did then. She was truly something else.
In the process she clapped him on the forehead with her fly switch. He only noticed as the trickle of blood dripped down his nose!! :D
Just when I think I know a student, I realise I don't. Just when I think I've got a class where I want them, they show me who is boss. Just when I think I'm getting enough sleep, something else crops up that needs doing: interviews, timetable, preparing for the curriculum advisors (this requires a separate blog entirely!) report entries and inter-colleague tensions that arise from this process. I won't lie: my alcohol intake has increased, in capacity and speed (as was evidenced by my boss's surprise at the rate I downed a 500ml cider at our post-school drink after school. Daily I'm horrified at a good student's capacity for lying and rudeness, at a troubled student's inability to empathize with his fellow students, only in the next hour to be over-awed at how happy 5 children are who got their reward of a KFC bucket and a coke each to share for lunch because they didn't miss a single day of their cleaning crew all term. In one day my class can raise me up from wanting to quit, and then another student puts me in an arm lock. Most of my students' marks are still terrible, and yet there are enough of them who have said in all honesty that they never knew they could like mathematics.
The next week brings loads of planning, a new school timetable as we welcome two new staff and a 5 day conference (MES7: www.mes7.uct.ac.za) where I will get to present my Master's research to an audience who represent an international body of experts on school's like mine. I'm really looking forward to taking what I have seen in the last 3 months and getting some alternative views on it. I could do with some ideas and inspiration for some of these issues. More posts about curriculum advisors and pedagogical stuff for those interested will follow shortly. In the mean time...
*ahhhh*
P.S. Props to any one who can post a comment naming the artist who sang the title song.
But first, the end of term. The sense of profound relief is indescribable. I've lost count of the number of times this term I've thought I just can't go on. Honestly, I'm not sure how we all have. I'd be lying if I sort of nodded, smiled and said 'yeah, but that's how I roll: I'm tough like that'. Bulls@£t. I have wanted to run to my mummy and cry like a baby... and I have (except it was my husband). I have lost my cool with the kids, more than once (and paid the price for it). I have sworn and cursed and driven too fast and drunk too much in response to the stress. So no heroes here. I'm pleased to say I have not lashed out at my students--this is just not something I think I have in me. But boy oh boy, there are a few who I would secretly smile at if they tripped and fell. And I don't like this in myself. It doesn't last too long, I'm pleased to say: for the most part, I'm really starting to like my kids, even the naughty ones. But in the heat of the moment...
How have we done? On reflection, kind of ok I think. We have done some fun activities in the last few days to keep the kids engaged and in school: our attendance hasn't been great towards the end of term (maybe 70-75%?) but I suspect this is better than average at this time of year. We had the fight of maintaining the learning after the end-of-term assessments, an event that was another window into what our students considered 'normal'--the idea that we would teach after these assessments was met with much anger and confusion. Our students are truly used to their teachers marking in lessons while the students run amok. Some responded to the rational argument about lost lessons accumulating, others just had to be told straight. And of course, the other side of this struggle has been as teachers to not succumb to the temptation to utilize this expectation from the students to make our lives easier. Sure, we could've marked during lessons. I'd probably have gotten more than 6 hours of sleep a night if I had. Tempting? of course it is. Some of us held out better than others, but we were all tempted to do this. In this week we have had a day of 'sporty stuff', including obstacle courses, sack races, soccer, netball, tug-of-war (we broke a 2 inch thick rope! I truly wish I'd seen all the grade 8s fall to the floor simultaneously >:) ) and a treasure hunt. The kids loved it. They went bos!! (SA slang for crazy). Loud, fast, furious, and crazy! Their sense of being able to lose is non-existent: the rule of the day was if you won, it wasn't cheating, but if the other team won, it was. If you didn't help your class cheat, you were 'fixing it'. We all shook our heads in disbelief at the approach to competition that the children took. If you asked the teachers, we'd say the day was nuts. But if you asked the kids, they would say it was awesome. At the end of the day, they didn't want to leave. 'nuff said.
There's never a dull moment you know. If we're not liaising with social services about situations of potential abuse, we're reeling from the loss of another teacher, or watching our kids start a car wash business in the car park, or wondering what to do about our students who eat the eugenia berries around the playground and sit in class farting intolerably as a result. Only just today, at our end-of-term awards ceremony, this small girl in my grade 8 class, a combination of shy and slightly chatty/cheeky, dressed up in her uxhentso traditional wear and transformed before our eyes into the most unbelievable 4 foot high umbongi (praise singer)!! She let forth in a huge voice--other-worldly in nature--a torrent of praise in isiXhosa to our headteacher, with her fly-switch of grass and her painted face, singing his praises for believing in them, for seeing a future for them, for coming to the community and building a school and how grateful the children were. The response from the staff and students alike was explosive: I have never jabbed my fist in the air as I did then. She was truly something else.
In the process she clapped him on the forehead with her fly switch. He only noticed as the trickle of blood dripped down his nose!! :D
Just when I think I know a student, I realise I don't. Just when I think I've got a class where I want them, they show me who is boss. Just when I think I'm getting enough sleep, something else crops up that needs doing: interviews, timetable, preparing for the curriculum advisors (this requires a separate blog entirely!) report entries and inter-colleague tensions that arise from this process. I won't lie: my alcohol intake has increased, in capacity and speed (as was evidenced by my boss's surprise at the rate I downed a 500ml cider at our post-school drink after school. Daily I'm horrified at a good student's capacity for lying and rudeness, at a troubled student's inability to empathize with his fellow students, only in the next hour to be over-awed at how happy 5 children are who got their reward of a KFC bucket and a coke each to share for lunch because they didn't miss a single day of their cleaning crew all term. In one day my class can raise me up from wanting to quit, and then another student puts me in an arm lock. Most of my students' marks are still terrible, and yet there are enough of them who have said in all honesty that they never knew they could like mathematics.
The next week brings loads of planning, a new school timetable as we welcome two new staff and a 5 day conference (MES7: www.mes7.uct.ac.za) where I will get to present my Master's research to an audience who represent an international body of experts on school's like mine. I'm really looking forward to taking what I have seen in the last 3 months and getting some alternative views on it. I could do with some ideas and inspiration for some of these issues. More posts about curriculum advisors and pedagogical stuff for those interested will follow shortly. In the mean time...
*ahhhh*
P.S. Props to any one who can post a comment naming the artist who sang the title song.
Tuesday, 26 February 2013
Creating spaces
Today warrants a special post about positionality, spurred by 2 contrasting events which just couldn't help but strike home.
Positionality is that schmancy academic word to refer to who you are relative to who others are... and how you negotiate your identities within the given context of the interaction, laden with history, power, appearance, income, language, race, accent, gender and anything else that might affect how you interact with people or they you.
SA is just a complete dogs breakfast when it comes to positionality. How you walk, how you talk, your accent, your dialect, your dress code, your gender, your car... and of course your language and your skin colour!!... are all used to pigeonhole you into a VERY specific, well defined and excessively laden identity within 5 seconds of meeting and greeting, an identity burdened with history and violence. Due to our geographical separation, for many people of many different identities, some physical spaces are so unfrequented by people of certain 'races' that you stick out like a sore thumb, branded by your melanin as an outsider.
For a 'white' person, a township is such a place. More importantly, South Africans walk around excessively conscientious of skin colour: their own and other peoples'. One of the first things that struck my students is the difference in our skin colours (I'll write another post soon about how my students see themselves due to their skin colour--that's a completely different can of worms).
So event 1 today. I completely lost any cogniscence of my skin colour. In the moment of doing maths with my boys at the whiteboard after school, we were chatting away in isiXhosa and it just didn't feature. Not a blip on the radar. My hand pointed to the number next to theirs, the colours were so obviously not the same and yet our difference just melted away. It was the first time I haven't felt 'white'. It was awesome. I was told by a student over the weekend: "Ma'am, sometimes I forget that you are white. I speak isiXhosa to you and I forget." Forget please, sana, forget away. The more you forget my 'whiteness' the better. The more I forget my whiteness, the better.
Which brings me to Event 2. We went to the local township library today (myself and my colleague, who is learning isiXhosa). We got to chatting while we were in the library with a group of junior school age boys... ok, I admit: I got to chatting with them. In isiXhosa of course! My poor colleague following along as I showed off. One boy, quite a bright young fellow, was adamant!!! He kept repeating in isiXhosa "no, but you're an umlungu! (white person) you don't speak isiXhosa". Over and over. Incredulity maybe?
Then he asked me "so where did you learn isiXhosa? where? where?"... getting quite angry and adamant that this thing he was hearing/seeing didn't make sense and he was going to get to the bottom of this trick I was pulling on him.
Him: "where did you learn isiXhosa? where?"
Me: "where did you learn English?"
Him: "but WHERE did you learn isiXhosa?"
Me: "where did you learn English?"
Him: "at school! I learnt English at school!! Where did you learn isiXhosa?"
Me: "at school. Like you".
It was the cutest teasing ever. This poor thing was besides himself. Such things cannot be, umlungus who speak isiXhosa. For his 7 year old mind, this was a trick. A trick he was determined to discover.
Then I became another boy's party trick. His friend came into the library and he bounded up to his friend and said "I've found an umlungu who can speak isiXhosa! Like PEH-FEKT-LEE. Like perfect!" (very flattering-my Xhosa is NOT perfect).
Friend: "no way, you are lying".
Boy: "it's true, it's true! That one there! (point at me)".
Friend: "uh-uh... no way"
Boy: "yers, like perfectly!".
Eventually, when I continued my conversation with the first boy, the second one turned to his friend and said in the most precocious voice "Seeeeeee, I told you so!". I was his party trick, his frog-in-a-lunchbox :) it was awesome.
What do we do when we defy others' expectations of us? How many spaces and opportunities do we create for real connection when we buck the very rigid stereotypes created by a system of racial and economic engineering which are still so ubiquitous in our South African society? I'm hoping that this is a really valuable lesson for my students: to not judge someone by the colour of their skin. In SA, it's a lesson we all need to learn again and again.
Positionality is that schmancy academic word to refer to who you are relative to who others are... and how you negotiate your identities within the given context of the interaction, laden with history, power, appearance, income, language, race, accent, gender and anything else that might affect how you interact with people or they you.
SA is just a complete dogs breakfast when it comes to positionality. How you walk, how you talk, your accent, your dialect, your dress code, your gender, your car... and of course your language and your skin colour!!... are all used to pigeonhole you into a VERY specific, well defined and excessively laden identity within 5 seconds of meeting and greeting, an identity burdened with history and violence. Due to our geographical separation, for many people of many different identities, some physical spaces are so unfrequented by people of certain 'races' that you stick out like a sore thumb, branded by your melanin as an outsider.
For a 'white' person, a township is such a place. More importantly, South Africans walk around excessively conscientious of skin colour: their own and other peoples'. One of the first things that struck my students is the difference in our skin colours (I'll write another post soon about how my students see themselves due to their skin colour--that's a completely different can of worms).
So event 1 today. I completely lost any cogniscence of my skin colour. In the moment of doing maths with my boys at the whiteboard after school, we were chatting away in isiXhosa and it just didn't feature. Not a blip on the radar. My hand pointed to the number next to theirs, the colours were so obviously not the same and yet our difference just melted away. It was the first time I haven't felt 'white'. It was awesome. I was told by a student over the weekend: "Ma'am, sometimes I forget that you are white. I speak isiXhosa to you and I forget." Forget please, sana, forget away. The more you forget my 'whiteness' the better. The more I forget my whiteness, the better.
Which brings me to Event 2. We went to the local township library today (myself and my colleague, who is learning isiXhosa). We got to chatting while we were in the library with a group of junior school age boys... ok, I admit: I got to chatting with them. In isiXhosa of course! My poor colleague following along as I showed off. One boy, quite a bright young fellow, was adamant!!! He kept repeating in isiXhosa "no, but you're an umlungu! (white person) you don't speak isiXhosa". Over and over. Incredulity maybe?
Then he asked me "so where did you learn isiXhosa? where? where?"... getting quite angry and adamant that this thing he was hearing/seeing didn't make sense and he was going to get to the bottom of this trick I was pulling on him.
Him: "where did you learn isiXhosa? where?"
Me: "where did you learn English?"
Him: "but WHERE did you learn isiXhosa?"
Me: "where did you learn English?"
Him: "at school! I learnt English at school!! Where did you learn isiXhosa?"
Me: "at school. Like you".
It was the cutest teasing ever. This poor thing was besides himself. Such things cannot be, umlungus who speak isiXhosa. For his 7 year old mind, this was a trick. A trick he was determined to discover.
Then I became another boy's party trick. His friend came into the library and he bounded up to his friend and said "I've found an umlungu who can speak isiXhosa! Like PEH-FEKT-LEE. Like perfect!" (very flattering-my Xhosa is NOT perfect).
Friend: "no way, you are lying".
Boy: "it's true, it's true! That one there! (point at me)".
Friend: "uh-uh... no way"
Boy: "yers, like perfectly!".
Eventually, when I continued my conversation with the first boy, the second one turned to his friend and said in the most precocious voice "Seeeeeee, I told you so!". I was his party trick, his frog-in-a-lunchbox :) it was awesome.
What do we do when we defy others' expectations of us? How many spaces and opportunities do we create for real connection when we buck the very rigid stereotypes created by a system of racial and economic engineering which are still so ubiquitous in our South African society? I'm hoping that this is a really valuable lesson for my students: to not judge someone by the colour of their skin. In SA, it's a lesson we all need to learn again and again.
Monday, 25 February 2013
Salvation in a teapot
It's been 3 weeks since the last blog post. Not that there hasn't been plenty plenty plenty to write about in the last 3 weeks, but this is rather an indictment on the time available in which to write about it.
The week after the last blog post felt like a genuine corner turned. Something clicked and for reason, for me, the kids were on side, on task and getting on with it. Despite trying to address the staff shortage issue, something worked for me in my classes...
I'm super pleased to say that since then, my relationship with my grade 9s has grown and grown. Despite grade 9 having such a bad rap as the really 'tough' year in high school, I think there is a difference for this cohort as the 'seniors' of the school. They ARE the big kids, and hence don't need to prove it. There is also a small advantage to the slightly older kids who have repeated a couple of years... they add that small core of maturity which you wouldn't get if the whole lot of them were 14. A few 16 year olds is actually working out well in this case.
But grade 8! Going into grade 8 feels like going into war. I drop my helmet, don my gas mask (in some cases, literally!! what are those kids eating?!?!) and venture forth ready for battle.
In the case of grade 8s, it feels like quite a few major factors are collaborating together. Our rooms are very long and narrow, and it feels like battling a dragon when you can only access the head. The classes are just that 3-kids too many too! Man, what a difference when a couple of them are absent! 33 I can manage. 36 is just over the tipping point. And you feel like a tennis ball between the back and the front of the classroom: you get the back to shush, and then the front starts up. The front is quiet, then the back starts. To be honest, on days when a troublemaker (and there's a critical mass of them!!!) is sleeping, I actually don't want to wake him/her up. I know I should. But can you blame me? It means the other 30 kids actually learn.
Also for me, grade 8s have somehow ended up later in the day. Man, you can set your watch by our kids' behaviour depending on the time of day. The first two lessons? Angelic, across the school (ok, almost angelic). After first break? Mmph, a bit rowdy, a couple of flare ups, but nothing a decent lesson plan and some routine can't sort out.
After second break? Good bloody luck to you. The Gizmos turn to Gremlins and it's just anarchy. And most of my grade 8 lessons are the last two of the day.
I thought it was just me. I thought I was missing something... but it turns out I'm not the only one who feels like this with Grade 8. I dread it. And of course, the kids detect this, the perceptive little $%£. I notice I find myself prioritising my Grade 9 planning, my grade 9 preparation. Which makes it worse of course.
The teacher voice in me says 'plan the crap out of them--blow them out the water with such an engaging lesson that they can't help but behave because they are too darn interested'. Easy to say unless you're on 5 hours sleep a night and working 80 hour weeks. Very easy to say. In situations like this, one can hardly be blamed for focusing on what works and picking the battles it feels like you might win.
The week before last was just hell. Something in the water? I don't know. Grade 8 were climbing the walls by 9am. What is it? Bad learning habits? Critical mass of students? Downward spiralling relationship? bad planning? Bad time of day? Combo? Probably. Either way, I need to find a way somehow of breaking out of this loop. It's like a really irritating record stuck on repeat and it's driving me mad.
My lousy grade 8 classes are enough to make me reflect on each day and dismiss it as a failure. My blood has boiled and I've had enough. Genoeg! KWANELE!
So here's the crux of today's post (I have so much else I could write about, specific or general, theoretical or practical: I'm just going with a brief update and one thought-for-the-blog)... focusing on positives. Small positives. Daily wins. Here are a few that are keeping me (and the others) ticking over:
-the students are starting to greet us in a genuine way instead of sarcastically. :)
-last week Thursday 6 students set up a couple of chairs in the courtyard and just started reading. They had borrowed some Roald Dahl from me, and some from the english teacher. Some had brought a book themselves to school. They sat in silence, propped up against each other, nose stuck in book, completely absorbed. It was awesome!!
-the choir did their first little song at assembly. They have improved so much in 4 weeks! 2 new very enthusiastic boys now want to sign up: they really enjoyed it that much.
-my grade 9s make me smile daily. I had the worst grade 8 lesson ever and then walking to my room next door to find they had, without being reminded, gone to fetch the brooms and cleaned my room.
-one grade 9 chased after me today to return a pencil I had lent him. Given how much of my stationery the grade 8s have been stealing, this melted my heart.
-one girl wrote in her journal that she 'is now no longer afraid of fractions and its so good'. :)
-we have books! Kind donations have started our library: we have 300+ books! It's great.
-one of my grade 9 boys who has such a naughty reputation got 70% in his maths test last week. Despite all the others' really bad marks, this really made me smile :)
--my grade 9s seem to genuinely enjoy maths. Like, really enjoy it. :) they are trying hard.
There are others. These are a few. Manna for my soul. Fuel for my tank. We're half way through term... let's see what the next 5 weeks bring. Right now my salvation is in small victories and my teapot or coffee thermos. Sterkte.
The week after the last blog post felt like a genuine corner turned. Something clicked and for reason, for me, the kids were on side, on task and getting on with it. Despite trying to address the staff shortage issue, something worked for me in my classes...
I'm super pleased to say that since then, my relationship with my grade 9s has grown and grown. Despite grade 9 having such a bad rap as the really 'tough' year in high school, I think there is a difference for this cohort as the 'seniors' of the school. They ARE the big kids, and hence don't need to prove it. There is also a small advantage to the slightly older kids who have repeated a couple of years... they add that small core of maturity which you wouldn't get if the whole lot of them were 14. A few 16 year olds is actually working out well in this case.
But grade 8! Going into grade 8 feels like going into war. I drop my helmet, don my gas mask (in some cases, literally!! what are those kids eating?!?!) and venture forth ready for battle.
In the case of grade 8s, it feels like quite a few major factors are collaborating together. Our rooms are very long and narrow, and it feels like battling a dragon when you can only access the head. The classes are just that 3-kids too many too! Man, what a difference when a couple of them are absent! 33 I can manage. 36 is just over the tipping point. And you feel like a tennis ball between the back and the front of the classroom: you get the back to shush, and then the front starts up. The front is quiet, then the back starts. To be honest, on days when a troublemaker (and there's a critical mass of them!!!) is sleeping, I actually don't want to wake him/her up. I know I should. But can you blame me? It means the other 30 kids actually learn.
Also for me, grade 8s have somehow ended up later in the day. Man, you can set your watch by our kids' behaviour depending on the time of day. The first two lessons? Angelic, across the school (ok, almost angelic). After first break? Mmph, a bit rowdy, a couple of flare ups, but nothing a decent lesson plan and some routine can't sort out.
After second break? Good bloody luck to you. The Gizmos turn to Gremlins and it's just anarchy. And most of my grade 8 lessons are the last two of the day.
I thought it was just me. I thought I was missing something... but it turns out I'm not the only one who feels like this with Grade 8. I dread it. And of course, the kids detect this, the perceptive little $%£. I notice I find myself prioritising my Grade 9 planning, my grade 9 preparation. Which makes it worse of course.
The teacher voice in me says 'plan the crap out of them--blow them out the water with such an engaging lesson that they can't help but behave because they are too darn interested'. Easy to say unless you're on 5 hours sleep a night and working 80 hour weeks. Very easy to say. In situations like this, one can hardly be blamed for focusing on what works and picking the battles it feels like you might win.
The week before last was just hell. Something in the water? I don't know. Grade 8 were climbing the walls by 9am. What is it? Bad learning habits? Critical mass of students? Downward spiralling relationship? bad planning? Bad time of day? Combo? Probably. Either way, I need to find a way somehow of breaking out of this loop. It's like a really irritating record stuck on repeat and it's driving me mad.
My lousy grade 8 classes are enough to make me reflect on each day and dismiss it as a failure. My blood has boiled and I've had enough. Genoeg! KWANELE!
So here's the crux of today's post (I have so much else I could write about, specific or general, theoretical or practical: I'm just going with a brief update and one thought-for-the-blog)... focusing on positives. Small positives. Daily wins. Here are a few that are keeping me (and the others) ticking over:
-the students are starting to greet us in a genuine way instead of sarcastically. :)
-last week Thursday 6 students set up a couple of chairs in the courtyard and just started reading. They had borrowed some Roald Dahl from me, and some from the english teacher. Some had brought a book themselves to school. They sat in silence, propped up against each other, nose stuck in book, completely absorbed. It was awesome!!
-the choir did their first little song at assembly. They have improved so much in 4 weeks! 2 new very enthusiastic boys now want to sign up: they really enjoyed it that much.
-my grade 9s make me smile daily. I had the worst grade 8 lesson ever and then walking to my room next door to find they had, without being reminded, gone to fetch the brooms and cleaned my room.
-one grade 9 chased after me today to return a pencil I had lent him. Given how much of my stationery the grade 8s have been stealing, this melted my heart.
-one girl wrote in her journal that she 'is now no longer afraid of fractions and its so good'. :)
-we have books! Kind donations have started our library: we have 300+ books! It's great.
-one of my grade 9 boys who has such a naughty reputation got 70% in his maths test last week. Despite all the others' really bad marks, this really made me smile :)
--my grade 9s seem to genuinely enjoy maths. Like, really enjoy it. :) they are trying hard.
There are others. These are a few. Manna for my soul. Fuel for my tank. We're half way through term... let's see what the next 5 weeks bring. Right now my salvation is in small victories and my teapot or coffee thermos. Sterkte.
Thursday, 7 February 2013
Reflections on chatting with some colleagues and friends about my job
It's been a while. Time for a blog post :)
About 2 weeks have passed since the last post. They have revealed that raw space where you really think you don't have anything more to give... that place when you find out if your convictions can take you forward or whether you'll cave in.
It's no one particular thing. In fact, overall, no one thing is particularly bad. It's rather the accumulation of many, many, many small things, unrelentless, crashing against you daily as the sea does rocks. We know that the sea wins eventually. Mostly it's the lack of sleep--that always makes everything feel much worse than it really is. You hear your own voice getting cross with kids who just won't shut up and realise how you're becoming that unpleasant shouty teacher because you're too tired to implement effective behaviour management. Bleh. The One Thing guaranteed to make you cave is sleep deprivation.
One teacher has decided to go--he has not come back.That's put the rest of us in a pickle as we have had to scramble for someone to take his classes. We had one unattended class when he was absent without notice; with that one chaotic unattended class the whole school environment felt like a 'typical township' school: loud and uncontrolled, kids running around yelling. That afternoon did not feel good... we felt like we were sliding backwards.
For some reason yesterday felt like a breakthrough point--that despite the tiredness and the daily battle to keep good order when the class next door erupts into a cacophony (in my last lesson there was a brawl in the classroom diagonally opposite with the usual chaos of a full on fight :P). It was a good breakthrough point: not the "I don't care" beaten point, but an "ah well, let's get on with it then" point.
Tonight I was kindly invited to share some thoughts and experiences of opening the school and was asked to provide a title for the evening. I chose the title "Doing things Differently"... and then during the entire discussion I didn't get to talking about exactly what it is we are trying to do differently! Although I felt like I only told the story as it was--honestly and factually--I realised by the end of the evening that everything had sounded hopelessly negative. What was a factual account of the status quo reflected the bleak landscape that our education system has become. As things currently stand, I am far too immersed in my daily local interactions to pick my head up over the parapet and see things at the system level. I won't apologise for that at this point: I think it's understandable to focus on the daily immediate stuff at this stage. Perhaps in a few months time when the school feels more established I'll look more holistically at a system level, but for now focusing on the daily bread and butter issues is understandable.
I think sounding negative is also justifiable, if not entirely healthy. So sorry to those folks who listened to me problematize the education system (or shoot down their suggestions), although I'll stand by my answers as accurate. After all, we can't start to find solutions that will work if we don't understand the inter-related complexity of the problem. Ignoring the reasons why solutions won't work doesn't make them work after all.
But let me lay out here why I chose to call the evening "doing things differently". I still believe that we are doing things differently at our new school. Here's a few ways how:
--we're still looking for the potential in the kids instead of the problems. We're still holding the perspective that punishment and sanctions are not to be implemented blindly.
--we're doing our best not to forget those quiet kids who get drowned out by the bad behaviour. For my own part, I know almost all the names now. It's made a huge difference. In fact, that is one way in which we are doing things differently to the norm (sadly, it is the norm-in most schools, the teachers don't know the kids by name).
--we home-visit. We go to the kids homes and see where they live, meet them and their families in a different environment. Home-visits haven't stepped up proper yet but we do them. That's different.
--we're looking for the resources to create experiences and opportunities for our kids that they wouldn't normally access. This is important to us.
--we're not giving up.
yes, that's different. Very different. 90% of the dysfunctionality in public schools is when (understandably) people have given up. We're not giving up. Despite 2 laptops getting stolen, we're not giving up. Despite the kids who do not understand the idea of not hitting each other, we're not giving up. Despite how truly awful that lesson after second break feels when the sun is baking us all like sardines in our tin-can-classrooms...we're not giving up. Despite some of us still waiting for our paychecks, we're still not giving up. Yes, the silly things like the fact that we still don't have rulers (! arbitrary to everyone except a maths teacher!!), or that we can't have a photocopier that does collation and double-sided (apparently we aren't a big enough school to warrant saving time or paper)... those little things feel big on top of everything else. We're still working with porta-loos, and we need to bolt everything to the floor to stop it going walking... we're one man short and I've got to mark an extra 200 tests over the weekend on top of the other 100 homeworks and 60 books and feel like crying...
but I'm not giving up.
At least not yet.
About 2 weeks have passed since the last post. They have revealed that raw space where you really think you don't have anything more to give... that place when you find out if your convictions can take you forward or whether you'll cave in.
It's no one particular thing. In fact, overall, no one thing is particularly bad. It's rather the accumulation of many, many, many small things, unrelentless, crashing against you daily as the sea does rocks. We know that the sea wins eventually. Mostly it's the lack of sleep--that always makes everything feel much worse than it really is. You hear your own voice getting cross with kids who just won't shut up and realise how you're becoming that unpleasant shouty teacher because you're too tired to implement effective behaviour management. Bleh. The One Thing guaranteed to make you cave is sleep deprivation.
One teacher has decided to go--he has not come back.That's put the rest of us in a pickle as we have had to scramble for someone to take his classes. We had one unattended class when he was absent without notice; with that one chaotic unattended class the whole school environment felt like a 'typical township' school: loud and uncontrolled, kids running around yelling. That afternoon did not feel good... we felt like we were sliding backwards.
For some reason yesterday felt like a breakthrough point--that despite the tiredness and the daily battle to keep good order when the class next door erupts into a cacophony (in my last lesson there was a brawl in the classroom diagonally opposite with the usual chaos of a full on fight :P). It was a good breakthrough point: not the "I don't care" beaten point, but an "ah well, let's get on with it then" point.
Tonight I was kindly invited to share some thoughts and experiences of opening the school and was asked to provide a title for the evening. I chose the title "Doing things Differently"... and then during the entire discussion I didn't get to talking about exactly what it is we are trying to do differently! Although I felt like I only told the story as it was--honestly and factually--I realised by the end of the evening that everything had sounded hopelessly negative. What was a factual account of the status quo reflected the bleak landscape that our education system has become. As things currently stand, I am far too immersed in my daily local interactions to pick my head up over the parapet and see things at the system level. I won't apologise for that at this point: I think it's understandable to focus on the daily immediate stuff at this stage. Perhaps in a few months time when the school feels more established I'll look more holistically at a system level, but for now focusing on the daily bread and butter issues is understandable.
I think sounding negative is also justifiable, if not entirely healthy. So sorry to those folks who listened to me problematize the education system (or shoot down their suggestions), although I'll stand by my answers as accurate. After all, we can't start to find solutions that will work if we don't understand the inter-related complexity of the problem. Ignoring the reasons why solutions won't work doesn't make them work after all.
But let me lay out here why I chose to call the evening "doing things differently". I still believe that we are doing things differently at our new school. Here's a few ways how:
--we're still looking for the potential in the kids instead of the problems. We're still holding the perspective that punishment and sanctions are not to be implemented blindly.
--we're doing our best not to forget those quiet kids who get drowned out by the bad behaviour. For my own part, I know almost all the names now. It's made a huge difference. In fact, that is one way in which we are doing things differently to the norm (sadly, it is the norm-in most schools, the teachers don't know the kids by name).
--we home-visit. We go to the kids homes and see where they live, meet them and their families in a different environment. Home-visits haven't stepped up proper yet but we do them. That's different.
--we're looking for the resources to create experiences and opportunities for our kids that they wouldn't normally access. This is important to us.
--we're not giving up.
yes, that's different. Very different. 90% of the dysfunctionality in public schools is when (understandably) people have given up. We're not giving up. Despite 2 laptops getting stolen, we're not giving up. Despite the kids who do not understand the idea of not hitting each other, we're not giving up. Despite how truly awful that lesson after second break feels when the sun is baking us all like sardines in our tin-can-classrooms...we're not giving up. Despite some of us still waiting for our paychecks, we're still not giving up. Yes, the silly things like the fact that we still don't have rulers (! arbitrary to everyone except a maths teacher!!), or that we can't have a photocopier that does collation and double-sided (apparently we aren't a big enough school to warrant saving time or paper)... those little things feel big on top of everything else. We're still working with porta-loos, and we need to bolt everything to the floor to stop it going walking... we're one man short and I've got to mark an extra 200 tests over the weekend on top of the other 100 homeworks and 60 books and feel like crying...
but I'm not giving up.
At least not yet.
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