Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Matt and I travel to a part of the Valley called Molweni, a rural township, to a Zulu school called St. Leo Primary School. The school has about 800 learners (South African word for students) from grade R to grade 7 who speak Zulu as their native language. We are teaching oral English to grades 3 to 7 and I personally teach grade 6 on Mondays, grade 4 on Wednesdays, and the lovely grade 7 on Fridays. Kevin and Matt teach grade 5 on Tuesdays and the adorable grade 3 on Thursdays, which includes quite the stories when they come home. The school itself is separated into 5-6 different buildings that each house two or three classrooms, a small library where we teach, and an administrative building where the principal and assistant principal have a small office.
Every morning there is an assembly where all the learners line up in rows according to grade and gender in front of one of the buildings. The assistant principal, Themba, or one of the other teachers leads the group in some songs and morning prayer followed by announcements. Matt and I always try to get there in time to see this assembly because it is a great way to start our day of teaching and be present for the learners to show that we care and are committed. After the assembly, we fight through the sea of students to get to the library/our classroom. The library building is shared between our classroom and two grade R classrooms, one on either side. The class that we share a door with has a really good teacher and the learners are always well behaved and doing something with the teacher, Thule. The other grade R teacher on the other side is very lazy, extremely obese, and doesn't do anything with her students. Those learners are always screaming, running around the classroom, and not doing any work. Most of the time the teacher doesn't even show up to school/leaves early. There have been multiple times that either Matt or I have had to go yell at the learners for being too loud when we are trying to teach our class. There is a teachers union at St. Leo that causes teachers like this lazy grade R one to still be able to stay at the school and get paid because no one wants to rat her out for doing such a poor job. Its quite the messed up system that neither Matt or I understand but someday we might have to say something if the ridiculousness continues. Unfortunately, this is not the only crazy thing about St. Leo. Have you ever wondered why things are the way they are? Well at St. Leo's there is no logical answer for anything. Last week one of the grade 2 teachers, who we never met, passed away from cancer which is very sad but the whole school was messed up because of it. Each day the kids have a 30 minute break from 10-1030am and last Monday the teachers had a meeting during that time to plan the memorial for the teacher but instead of it taking 30 minutes, it took 2 hours and all the kids were running around the school grounds with no supervision. Of course we didn't know what was going on until we tried to round up our next class and couldn't find any teachers let alone the learners we needed. Needless to say, the rest of the week was a disaster with the three hour long memorial service during the school hours on Wednesday and just random "early releases" for the other days. Since the teachers have an union, they are allowed to do what they want but last week they closed school early way too many days when they could of had the services or meetings after school hours so the kids could actually learn that day. Sad thing is on a normal week, the learners run wild for a good portion of the day or if they are in their classrooms, who knows what they are actually doing/if they are learning anything. The school has no set schedule/times and the days that each grade has our English class, the rest of the day is considered to be a "free" day for the learners and students. Now I will say there are some good teachers in the school that try and teach the kids and are dedicated but most use our English days as a time for the kids to run around. For example, on Wednesdays when we have grade 4, there are two different classes (4M and 4F) that are split into 4 classes each. So we usually have 4M group A, B, C, D and then 4F group A, B, C, D which works out well for us because its orgranized but when we have 4M group A, the rest of the kids are running around/maybe in their classrooms just talking and not doing any work. It is very hard to find the kids for the next class/have them come in at the right time but Matt and I are going to try to give each teacher a schedule of names and times we want the learners to come to English class which hopefully will work.
Ok enough with the complaining. Each grade has some kids that are great and sort of at the level they need to be at but most of them are way below. I always have to remind myself that English is their second language and remember how hard it was for me to learn French when I was in junior high. Another thing about the school that is frustrating is that the school doesn't start teaching both oral and written English until grade 3. So the grade 4 we have on Wednesday have only had one year of English before they came to us. Luckily the kids that are more "advanced" most likely have a parent or relative that speaks English at home which has helped them excel. The other kids who don't have someone like that are starting from scratch. For grade 4 we have taught/reviewed the alphabet, colors, food, shapes, and basic pictures. We have used the An African ABC book multiple times and tried to get them to pronounce the words correctly like A is for ant, A is for apple, B is for banana, C is for cat, etc. Most of the book is useful but some words are ridiculous like V is veranda and Q is for queue which I barely know what it is, how the heck are they supposed to know??
Grade 6 on Mondays is much better but we tried to give them a test this week and last week which all but about 20 bombed completely. This was partially our fault because we threw together a test that had contradicting directions that were confusing. In the first part they were supposed to underline the noun, circle the verb, and put a star over the adjective but then the next section they had to circle the adjectives that described the underlined noun. It was very confusing for most of the kids and we realized this within the first two classes but it was the only test we had so we tried to help them as much as we could. There are about 18 learners who got an "A" on the test which made us very happy/proud that we taught something well. We are going to make them the advanced group and teach them separately which will hopefully prepare them for grade 7 and eventually high school.
Friday we teach grade 7 who are going to high school next year and need a lot more preparation then we thought. There is a group of about 10 learners that are advanced but most of them are below average. One of the unique things we will be doing with this group is talking to the advanced/maybe "B" students about going to high school next year and making sure they fill out the appropriate paperwork. There are three different high schools in the area that these kids will go to: Hillcrest High School, Wybank High School, and "the blue school" which is the local township high school near St. Leo that wears blue uniforms. Each year, two grade 7 learners are given full scholarships to go to Hillcrest High School which is primarily white and very competitive. There are 3-4 learners that Matt and I think could go to Hillcrest and maybe 10 that could go to Wybank. Brother Craig who lives next to us helps out with the grade 7 advanced kids and helped with the scholarship process last year and will help this year as well. He has shadowed our grade 7 classes a couple times and has given us some helpful tips for ways to set up the classroom and teach different levels. Obviously Matt and I have been drawn to the advanced kids and there is one in particular that is easily the smartest learner in the school. His name is Ntuthuko and is actually the grandson of the Gogo (grandmother) we take Zulu lessons from on Fridays. His vocabulary, writing, and speaking are incrediable and he is always excited to participate and curious about learning. One Friday after class he stayed after and looked at a book about mummies and started asking Matt questions about the book that no other classmate would even comprehend let alone ask about in English. We would love for him to go to Hillcrest on one of the scholarships but unfortunately he has some behavioral issues because he got kicked out of a previous school. Even though we don't know many details, his aunt Themba (also the assistant principle) has talked to us about his bad behavior and definitely doesn't want to give the scholarship to him. Matt and I completely disagree and are going to try and fight for him but unfortunately the cultural and family issues might stop him from being able to get the scholarship and go to a great high school. I will keep you all posted more about him and all my other adventures teaching English!
South African Fact: People like to walk along the highway and cross traffic on the high way at any time of day. This is obviously very dangerous and extremely stupid but they still do it.
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