Journal Entry 29: Rolling Dice

Six months left and it’s time to take stock. Here’s what’s gone well:

- The soccer team was a lot of fun. I wasn’t always able to coach the kids as well as I’d have liked. But when I became frustrated I’d look out upon my corner of Africa and think, “Where would you rather be?” That always put things in perspective.

- The girls club was fun, too, but attendance was sporadic. It posed an obvious problem that I’m not a girl.

- The preschool exchange was an unforeseen success, thanks to the excellent educators involved. I think students and parents in both the US and South Africa benefited from it. It also gave me a great excuse to visit some of my favorite people in town.

- The well and garden project at my host father’s primary school is coming along; it should be fully funded within the next month, which is very exciting.

- After a year of frustration we received a 20,000 Rand donation (about $3,000) from Old Mutual Bank to buy a photocopier. Besides the obvious benefits, this machine should make Christmas parties a whole lot more exciting.

- And the HIV/AIDS awareness day on April 27th is fast approaching. It’s been a lot of fun to plan. I think it’s going to be great.

So that’s an overview of the things that have gone well. One thing is conspicuously absent from this list, however: Anything to do with my primary job responsibility-working with teachers at my four primary schools.

While my rapport with my teachers is still very good, most of the initiatives I’ve undertaken with them have had little traction. Helping teachers adopt a new teaching modality via the new National Curriculum, which I’m most passionate about, has also proved most frustrating.

Not long after I arrived in Venda I spent the better part of six months creating a workshops series that explains how to implement the National Curriculum. The workshops have been well received, but long-term changes have been small. There’s a good reason for this: While Teaching using the new National Curriculum is significantly better than the old, apartheid-era Bantu-style of teaching, it takes more work; especially at first.

The Department of Education expects teachers adopt this new style of teaching, but hasn’t provided them with sufficient training or incentives to implement it. So, while the workshops I created have trained teachers effectively, motivating teachers has proved to be very challenging.

Without the department applying pressure, I’ve had to partner with the schools’ management structures. Only problem being is that most principals and school management boards don’t have the organizational skills to orchestrate this change. So progress has been painstakingly slow-when it has happened at all.

Nevertheless, there are glimmers of hope. At one of my four schools - the Masia Senior Primary School - this new teaching style has a small foothold. For instance, sometimes I come to school and find teachers with their Teacher’s Guide already open writing a lesson plan. There are two incredible things about this. First, teachers are actually planning a lesson. Second, they’re using their Teacher’s Guides to do it. This is a direct result of training them in the National Curriculum.

To be sure, the old style of “lesson planning” - which is to teach on the fly or review the textbook shortly before class - is still the predominant modis operandi, even at the Masia School. But these first steps are encouraging, nevertheless.

So in my last six months of service, I’ve decided to narrow my focus and help the teachers at the Masia School write lesson plans. If they internalize the underlying principals of this process, I’d also like to teach them how to plan for a longer period of time.

There are formidable obstacles to successes. Foremost, teachers have an obvious aversion to doing more work that they are not being forced to do. Therefore, much of the progress that will be made will be done in the same way we’ve already made progress: By subterfuge; we will take a lot of little steps, veeery slowly! Then there’s the lack of Departmental support, lack of parental support, teachers missing school, under-funding, understaffing, under-qualification, under-a-lot-of-things. Sufficient to say it’s a big challenge. Maybe it’s mission: impossible, but it’s a challenge that excites me yet.

So with 6 months left and a lot having gone well, it’s time to focus on something that hasn’t gone as well as I would like in hopes of an 11th hour success. Pass me the dice!; it’s time to get back to work.