What would it be like to go to school at Pendla Primary in Port Elizabeth, South Africa?
· You would have to walk a long distance to school every day. If you’re young, the roads you would need to cross would be too dangerous for you.
· You would start school with prayer (at a public school).
· Your hallways would be outside. There would be no air conditioning, so you’d have to keep all the windows and doors open, even if it’s raining.
· As a white student, you would be the minority. Or more specifically, the only white person in a 5 mile radius.
· Your teacher may be late for school. Or she may not come at all. If she doesn’t come, plan on being put into another grade and just trying to follow along for the day. If you don’t know anything about what that grade is learning, you can just sit on the floor in front of the chalkboard for the day. There are no substitute teachers.
· There would be between 30 and 50 students in your class.
· Where would you sit? Your chair would be broken in some way. The legs might not be attached to the chair part, so you would fall off if you weren’t paying attention. The back of your chair may be broken off, so there is sharp jagged plastic to watch out for. You might have a chair that is much too small for you, like 1st grade size chair in a 7th grade room. You can write your name on the back of your chair in chalk if you want to try and have the same one each day. Your chair might be taken away if your teacher needs one to sit down in or if there is a guest in the room. Then you should share with another student or just kneel for the time. Chairs are not necessary for learning.
· Your desk would be wooden, like the ones you think of in a little house on the prairie school house.
· You would wear a uniform.
· Your teacher may not be knowledgeable in the subject she is teaching you.
· Name, date, school subject and title must be written at the top of every piece of paper. In perfect cursive. Straight. Use a ruler to make sure. You’ll have about ten minutes of class time to do this, so don’t hurry or anything.
· You’ll switch class subjects every thirty minutes. But there are no clocks and your teachers do not have watches, so don’t expect for that to happen on time. There are 11 thirty-minute periods in a day. Everyday your schedule will switch, don’t expect any sort of routine. You may have English 4 times in one day, but all different and spread out periods. Your teachers also probably will not know what class to be in at what time.
· The little kids still love any attention from the older “cooler” kids and love to give hugs and get high fives.
· The teaching format is lecture. Your teacher will talk, you will write notes. She’ll ask a question and as a class, you will recite the answer or repeat after her. You will not have a chance to play games or do any sort of hands on activity.
· There is no art, gym, computers, special education or science experiments.
· You would have a Xhosa class and an English class. You would try and teach anyone who comes into your classroom your first language, Xhosa. And you would giggle when they can’t make the same noises with their mouth as you.
· Your school wouldn’t have a lot of extra money, so your teachers would give you no form of worksheets, handouts or printed tests.
· There are no overheads, whiteboards, Smartboards or projectors. The chalkboards are old and cracked. It is very hard for you to read what the teacher writes on the board. You and your classmates are in charge of getting the water to dip the chalk into and wiping the chalkboard off for your teachers.
· Your homework is probably a little bit less than schools in the US.
· If you misbehave, you may get hit with a hard plastic stick on your hands. This is against the law.
· Your school notebooks are given to you by the government. Maybe your other school supplies too. At any point your teacher can take your pencils, markers or pens to keep and use for herself. You will constantly be short pencils and erasers and forced to share and borrow from your classmates.
· At recess you can play netball (like basketball) or soccer. Both with deflated balls. You sing songs and love to dance at recess. You get way over the top excited when your picture is taken and when you get to look at yourself on a digital camera screen.
· Your smiles warm the hearts of American college students.
Note: this is ONE school in South Africa. There are many other schools that are more well-off. But most schools in the townships are about the same.
So after reading that, you probably can start to sense some of the things I love about my teaching experience here and some of my frustrations. I go back and forth with loving it and hating it. It is rarely the kids that are the problem, more the teachers I work with and the school system in general. Monday I came home really down on myself and thinking, “Why did I ever think I would want to be a teacher when I grow up?” I seriously began thinking of how I could get out of my major at St. Bens and do something else. I don’t think it was THAT horrible, the bad day was amplified by being stressed out about my papers, tired from being gone all weekend and sad about my friend dying. Tuesday was better and I think every day will get better as I get used to it and the teachers get used to me. On Tuesday we taught a good lesson. There was a double period (an hour then) and we were able to teach new vocab words. To review them, we played charades. The words we acted out were twigs, refreshed, strength, argue, contest and slightly. I think the 4th graders loved to see my teaching partner and I act silly and they got to participate and be loud in class. They don’t get to do that very often.
I’m leaving for Durban in a couple hours. I’m pretty excited about the weekend. It will just be cool to travel with the thirty of us. I know we’re going on a walking tour, a hike, on shark boats and to a ballet. And a lot more stuff to keep us busy for 5 days.
I hope you all have great weekends!! I promise I'll be posting more soon, sorry it's been kind of sporatic.
Anna, how did you like John Hopkins? Is it a pretty school? What’s the area like?
Some people have asked about my address…no I’m not begging for letters.
Lauren Neal
Langerry Holiday Flats #11
31 Beach Road, Humewood
Port Elizabeth 6001
SOUTH AFRICA
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
Coffee Bay/Hole in the Wall
Okay I had an awesome and busy weekend! I'll recap that, answer some questions and then talk about this coming weekend!
Thursday we left right after class and went to the airport to pick up the car. The airport is only a few miles away so it's not too far. But I'm sure you can imagine how loud the airplanes can be when they fly right over our apartment! And PE has one of those landing strips where the plane has to fly out over the ocean, turn around and then head back in to land. There were four of us, Joe, Zach, Colleen and myself. Which ended up being the perfect amount in a car for a long car ride. We drove half way to Coffee Bay and stayed at a hostel, or a Backpackers in Chintsa. This place was good, but we went to bed almost right when we got there at 11:00 and woke up very early in the morning.
Friday we woke up, checked out and then went for a walk on the beach. This town was in a nice little bay so the beach was very nice. We took some pictures and then were on our way.
I drove this morning. It went well. I never tried to drive on the right side of the road like I was worried about. But I did continually switch on the wipers instead of the blinker because they're in different spots. I also stalled the car one time at a stoplight, or a ROBOT! Calling them robots is weird because it makes them seem like they're alive or something. There was about 70km of road that we took off of the highway. This was the worst road you could EVER imagine. We were warned from the people in Chintsa to beware of potholes and animals but we had no clue how severe that warning was! The road was littered with potholes. There was rarely anywhere you could drive without hitting one. So this was pretty stressful for me and I ended up switching so that Joe was driving. We lost two hubcaps on this road (luckily we saw them fall off). And the animals!!! WOOH! When we were warned of animals, I of course thought of kudu and springbok and all those animals I’d seen wild before. But no, the animals to look out for were cows, horses, donkeys, sheep and goats. The region we drove through is called the Transkei and it is where Nelson Mandela grew up. During the apartheid regime, it was one of the “homelands” or something comparable to an Indian Reservation. So this area has been able to maintain its heritage very well. It is in a mountain region, or at least very big hills (our car almost didn’t make it up some of the hills). The hillsides are filled with colorful huts where Xhosa people live. In this area, there isn’t running water or electricity. Almost no one has a car, so we also needed to be careful of all the people walking in the road. There were some beautiful views on this drive and if it wasn’t for the potholes and animals, we could have really taken it all in.
We got to the Coffee Shack Backpackers and were hot and tired. So we went to the beach. It was no easy feat to get to the beach here! We had to cross a river walking on rocks because it was filled with waste from the village. Then we had to walk up a hill and across a stretch of beach. Then we walked up some shaky steps, over fence. Through a forest and campground, through another fence. Down the road and onto the beach. Swim across another river thing (but this one was fed by ocean water), holding our belongings on top of our heads. And then you’re at the beach! Children were following us along the whole way, but we just kept telling them we didn’t have money and they’d run off for a little bit.
For dinner we went to a Xhosa village. This was arranged by the hostel and they sent an interpreter with the group of 10 of us who went. We got a tour of the yard. Apparently all those animals we saw would be herded into a fenced in area at night. We saw how they cook the food on coals in a special enclosure. And we went into the headman’s hut. This is where dinner was because it was the biggest. Some young girls danced for us while the rest of the people from the village sang. We tried Xhosa beer which was made from Maize. It was all right, but not my favorite. We drank from odd containers and passed it around. The females were made to sit on the ground, while the males were given benches and beds to sit on. This wouldn’t have been that big of a deal if we weren’t there for three hours! I was definitely ready to stand up when we left! We ate a traditional two course meal there. The first course was sugar bean and corn soup (kind of). It needed a lot of salt. The second course was pap, which is ground up maize. It was very good and then it had a store-bought gravy on top. After dinner there was more dancing by boys and girls (the girls were topless, and some a little too old). Then they invited/made us dance too. The dancing was pretty hard, lots of shaking of the hips and butt! When we left they followed us in the car for a ways singing. This whole night cost $4.oo.
Saturday we went for a hike to Hole in the Wall. Well we drove to the town of Hole in the Wall and then went hiking around it. It was a great day with the most beautiful scenery. The landmark Hole in the Wall is a very large rock only a little bit off the coast that has a hole in it (like the shape of a mouse hole in a wall). The hole was formed over time from the waves hitting against it. We climbed to the top of a very big hill/mountain and had a gorgeous view of the village, the ocean and the hole in the wall. Again to get to the hole in the wall we had to go over the river and through the woods, and on and on. But it was cool. We took some pictures so it looked like we were IN the hole, but the waves were too big to actually go into the hole. We also went to a beach that was around here and we were laying out, sun tanning, with cows!! The cows were on the beach! So to pick out a spot to lay down, you had to first of all stay far away from the cows, and second of all, watch out for poop!
Sunday we drove home, it ended up being about 7 hours total and Joe and I took turns. The others did homework in the backseat. Since we got home, I’ve been exhausted and stressed out about homework! But I’m not going to stop seeing everything I can just because of a silly little thing like school! I’ll post some pictures from this weekend later too.
So I have this paper due Tuesday, today, and one due on Wednesday. Those are taking over my time for now. But then bright and early on Thursday we leave on a group excursion to Durban till Monday! I'm too busy to even think about it! Durban is further up the eastern coast. I think it'll be about a 2 hour flight. And I'm not sure what we're going to do there, it's all planned out and paid for though.
I hope everyone is doing well, I’m really sorry to hear about all the snow you’ve gotten this last week! I hope the shovelers in the group aren’t too sore!
Happy Belated Birthdays to Jessie, Dar and Steve! Both the Iowa party and the Hamel party sound like they were fun this weekend! I wonder if cake was served first at the Gustafson party too?
Mac I hope you had fun at your retreat this weekend! Sorry I didn’t get to talk to you on Sunday! And I hope synchro is going well!!
Nome-Beltz Junior High students: I would not advise anyone to feed the monkeys at my school! The monkeys can be very mean. If they see you have food, they might attack you and scratch and bite. So it’s probably best to just keep your food hidden when they’re around. But I haven’t seen them yet this week! Make sure you check out a post I’ll be putting up soon about what school is like here!
I know that I told a lot of you this winter before I left about my boss at St. Bens, Cynthia who was sick with cancer. She passed away this last week at home in Holdingford. She really meant a lot to me as we worked together every day for two years. I miss her now and I will miss talking to her a lot next year when I go back to St. Bens. Please pray for her son and daughter who no longer have her with them.
Thursday we left right after class and went to the airport to pick up the car. The airport is only a few miles away so it's not too far. But I'm sure you can imagine how loud the airplanes can be when they fly right over our apartment! And PE has one of those landing strips where the plane has to fly out over the ocean, turn around and then head back in to land. There were four of us, Joe, Zach, Colleen and myself. Which ended up being the perfect amount in a car for a long car ride. We drove half way to Coffee Bay and stayed at a hostel, or a Backpackers in Chintsa. This place was good, but we went to bed almost right when we got there at 11:00 and woke up very early in the morning.
Friday we woke up, checked out and then went for a walk on the beach. This town was in a nice little bay so the beach was very nice. We took some pictures and then were on our way.
I drove this morning. It went well. I never tried to drive on the right side of the road like I was worried about. But I did continually switch on the wipers instead of the blinker because they're in different spots. I also stalled the car one time at a stoplight, or a ROBOT! Calling them robots is weird because it makes them seem like they're alive or something. There was about 70km of road that we took off of the highway. This was the worst road you could EVER imagine. We were warned from the people in Chintsa to beware of potholes and animals but we had no clue how severe that warning was! The road was littered with potholes. There was rarely anywhere you could drive without hitting one. So this was pretty stressful for me and I ended up switching so that Joe was driving. We lost two hubcaps on this road (luckily we saw them fall off). And the animals!!! WOOH! When we were warned of animals, I of course thought of kudu and springbok and all those animals I’d seen wild before. But no, the animals to look out for were cows, horses, donkeys, sheep and goats. The region we drove through is called the Transkei and it is where Nelson Mandela grew up. During the apartheid regime, it was one of the “homelands” or something comparable to an Indian Reservation. So this area has been able to maintain its heritage very well. It is in a mountain region, or at least very big hills (our car almost didn’t make it up some of the hills). The hillsides are filled with colorful huts where Xhosa people live. In this area, there isn’t running water or electricity. Almost no one has a car, so we also needed to be careful of all the people walking in the road. There were some beautiful views on this drive and if it wasn’t for the potholes and animals, we could have really taken it all in.
We got to the Coffee Shack Backpackers and were hot and tired. So we went to the beach. It was no easy feat to get to the beach here! We had to cross a river walking on rocks because it was filled with waste from the village. Then we had to walk up a hill and across a stretch of beach. Then we walked up some shaky steps, over fence. Through a forest and campground, through another fence. Down the road and onto the beach. Swim across another river thing (but this one was fed by ocean water), holding our belongings on top of our heads. And then you’re at the beach! Children were following us along the whole way, but we just kept telling them we didn’t have money and they’d run off for a little bit.
For dinner we went to a Xhosa village. This was arranged by the hostel and they sent an interpreter with the group of 10 of us who went. We got a tour of the yard. Apparently all those animals we saw would be herded into a fenced in area at night. We saw how they cook the food on coals in a special enclosure. And we went into the headman’s hut. This is where dinner was because it was the biggest. Some young girls danced for us while the rest of the people from the village sang. We tried Xhosa beer which was made from Maize. It was all right, but not my favorite. We drank from odd containers and passed it around. The females were made to sit on the ground, while the males were given benches and beds to sit on. This wouldn’t have been that big of a deal if we weren’t there for three hours! I was definitely ready to stand up when we left! We ate a traditional two course meal there. The first course was sugar bean and corn soup (kind of). It needed a lot of salt. The second course was pap, which is ground up maize. It was very good and then it had a store-bought gravy on top. After dinner there was more dancing by boys and girls (the girls were topless, and some a little too old). Then they invited/made us dance too. The dancing was pretty hard, lots of shaking of the hips and butt! When we left they followed us in the car for a ways singing. This whole night cost $4.oo.
Saturday we went for a hike to Hole in the Wall. Well we drove to the town of Hole in the Wall and then went hiking around it. It was a great day with the most beautiful scenery. The landmark Hole in the Wall is a very large rock only a little bit off the coast that has a hole in it (like the shape of a mouse hole in a wall). The hole was formed over time from the waves hitting against it. We climbed to the top of a very big hill/mountain and had a gorgeous view of the village, the ocean and the hole in the wall. Again to get to the hole in the wall we had to go over the river and through the woods, and on and on. But it was cool. We took some pictures so it looked like we were IN the hole, but the waves were too big to actually go into the hole. We also went to a beach that was around here and we were laying out, sun tanning, with cows!! The cows were on the beach! So to pick out a spot to lay down, you had to first of all stay far away from the cows, and second of all, watch out for poop!
Sunday we drove home, it ended up being about 7 hours total and Joe and I took turns. The others did homework in the backseat. Since we got home, I’ve been exhausted and stressed out about homework! But I’m not going to stop seeing everything I can just because of a silly little thing like school! I’ll post some pictures from this weekend later too.
So I have this paper due Tuesday, today, and one due on Wednesday. Those are taking over my time for now. But then bright and early on Thursday we leave on a group excursion to Durban till Monday! I'm too busy to even think about it! Durban is further up the eastern coast. I think it'll be about a 2 hour flight. And I'm not sure what we're going to do there, it's all planned out and paid for though.
I hope everyone is doing well, I’m really sorry to hear about all the snow you’ve gotten this last week! I hope the shovelers in the group aren’t too sore!
Happy Belated Birthdays to Jessie, Dar and Steve! Both the Iowa party and the Hamel party sound like they were fun this weekend! I wonder if cake was served first at the Gustafson party too?
Mac I hope you had fun at your retreat this weekend! Sorry I didn’t get to talk to you on Sunday! And I hope synchro is going well!!
Nome-Beltz Junior High students: I would not advise anyone to feed the monkeys at my school! The monkeys can be very mean. If they see you have food, they might attack you and scratch and bite. So it’s probably best to just keep your food hidden when they’re around. But I haven’t seen them yet this week! Make sure you check out a post I’ll be putting up soon about what school is like here!
I know that I told a lot of you this winter before I left about my boss at St. Bens, Cynthia who was sick with cancer. She passed away this last week at home in Holdingford. She really meant a lot to me as we worked together every day for two years. I miss her now and I will miss talking to her a lot next year when I go back to St. Bens. Please pray for her son and daughter who no longer have her with them.
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