Need to get it off my chest....
Door: Angela
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Angela
17 Februari 2012 | Zuid-Afrika, Genadendal
Today is my first day off and for some reason I have been wide awake since 6am (went to bed at 2am -_-). I know it had only been 3 days since I have blogged but I feel like I have been through a lot the past few days and I had to write it down so I could share this with you.
As you all know we have started volunteering at Emil Weder High this week but we have also been asked if we could help out at the L.R. Schmidt primary because it is good to support the pupils with their English at an early stage so that they won’t fall behind with their English there. Just to give u a better image of the South African educational system: Primary schools cater to grade 1 to 7 and after that you continue to high school, grade 8 to 12.
At the moment, this is how we get to work: We go to the primary school twice a week, split grade 7 (48 pupils) into half and teach both the groups separately so we can give them more attention and we go to Emil Weder High school 3 days a week. The grade 8 and 9 teachers have identified the weak learners (16 pupils out 48 on average) and they’ll send them to us, twice a week. There are 4 grade 8 classes and 4 grade 9 classes which means we have 9 classes in total and teach about 18 hours a week.
This is what we have been doing for the last 2 days and by now we have met almost all of our pupils and I have to tell you it is quite a lot but we are with the two of us so it is pretty doable.
Each class the pupils enter the classroom, stand next to their table to greet us and they won’t sit down unless we tell them they are allowed to. When you warn them, most of them won’t give you a bad attitude (at least not yet) and they show you much more respect than in NL. They are very approachable and warm…. At the primary school there were pupils who hugged us when they left the classroom which really made us speechless. <3
We try to maintain an open and friendly atmosphere, which is pretty unusual since the majority of other teachers yell and sometimes even smack (!!) them when they misbehave.
It's no wonder pupils do the same thing. Whenever a fellow pupil does something that they don’t like, they’d just hit each other and that’s what we absolutely do not allow (the first rule we mentioned in class). There were also some pupils who showed unusual behavior. For instance, there was one pupil who didn’t respond to us unless we’d call him for about 3 times, had his eyes wide open and had eye’s so huge, it looked as if they were going to fall out and he wouldn’t really speak . When we asked his teacher what’s wrong with the little boy, she told us that he was one of the children “who was a problem” in her class. Apparently, there are pupils who use drugs already. So, the boy was intoxicated by drugs! He wasn’t the only one, there are 3 others in class who are addicted to drugs :S. It’s terrible, I can’t even imagine a high school pupil in NL being on drugs and here there are several children in primary who use it!
Anyway, this is just one of the many issues that are going on here in society. Other issues here: poverty, some children grow up in very rough neighborhoods, have parents who are always working and/or on drugs. Horrible, but not much we can do about that. All we can do is to try and help the children with their English so they can pass their exams, talk to them, provide them with hugs, be positive by overloading the them with compliments and to make the classes more fun so they can forget their personal issues for twice a week.
It has only been two weeks since I got here but I already know for certain, I made the right decision… Even if we can’t make a huge difference, solve big issues, we can still make small ones!
Ok this is about all I wanted to get off my chest at the moment.
Thanks for reading this…
Miss you guys heaps!
xoxo
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17 Februari 2012 - 13:16
Mark L Peart:
Yep,
Angela this is the real world. Don't try and change it or make things better, just improve what you can in your environment and micro-society.
You are making a difference even if its small compared to the national/international problem.
Mark
x -
17 Februari 2012 - 13:50
Homie:
Goed bezig Swa!
Enjoy ur day off! -
02 Maart 2012 - 14:16
Jan Linders:
Hi Angela,
You two are really doing a great job: provide your kids with hugs, rather than drugs -:)! No, I'm serious, if you can teach them some decent English and shower them with compliments, they're bound to profit from that! Jan
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