Ups and Downs

About a week and a half ago, as an exercise at our mid-service training, we were asked to graph our relative morale from month to month since we had gotten here. Mine seemed to be generally fairly high, though just like everybody else's its gone into a bit of a decline the last few months (like I told Omar, who has just finished his two years and is now off travelling: "Its not exciting and frustrating any more, its just frustrating!" "Yeah, thats pretty normal for right about now."). But like I said, on the whole I rate the last 15 months pretty highly. I attribute this to two things: 1) I really am having fun, and am generally fairly optimistic; and 2) I opted to focus on the best parts of each month rather than the worst. Had we been asked to graph things bi-weekly, or even weekly, there would have been a whole lot more down and things would have been a whole lot more bipolar. This week is an excellent example.


First, the ugly:
Monday and tuesday I once again braved the corporal punishment workshop. I've discussed my thoughts on corporal punishment already, but here I've taken the stance that if its not obvious its probably not that bad, so I don't want to get into it. However, the principal asked me to, so I did.
The first day bordered on disastrous. My teachers argued that the governemnt and department of education were in fact in the wrong, since both Jesus and the Bible advocate beating children (the first time I heard this argument I tried countering: "but didn't Jesus say suffer the little children? and turning the other cheek? Jesus never hit anybody, did he?" I've since learned that this is an entirely worthless strategy, so now I just go with a simple "I don't know. But it is still the law.") By the end of the day I'm pretty sure that I had just convinced them even more of the importance of beating their children. "But Nomvula, of course you are shocked by the extreme levels of violence in South Africa, its because you're from a different culture." Right about there I quit. Not a lot of counterarguments to that one, are there?
The second day was better. We talked about all the different ways teachers could keep discipline without sticks or paddles or any of that. Positive reinforcement, stickers, being in your class (...), all the strategies that we never have to think twice about because we grew up with them, but that are completely foreign to my teachers. It was good! It was great! They were engaged, they asked questions, they agreed that they could and would use all the strategies. They even came up with a few of their own and discussed them. Afterwards quite a few -- including the principal and deputy principal -- came up and thanked me for such a helpful workshop, and promised to do their best.
Success!!
Until today. When I walked into the staff room and saw one of the HODs (department heads) beating the crap out of a learner with a cane until the learner was crouched on the ground, crying and yelling and holding his hands up to protect himself. The childs crime? Hitting another learner. Yup, that beating will definitely teach him that beating people is wrong. (I did pull the HOD aside to speak with him, after initially storming out of the room. We discussed why he did at and what else he could have done...ironically, one discipline technique I highlighted in my workshop.)

Fortunately, this same week I've been spending the large majority of my time with two of my favorite teachers in the village. They are hands down the best of the 60 I work with. They care about the kids, teach the whole time, use a variety of activities and methods, actually plan their lessons, integrate reading and writing...I could go on and on. I love these women. Monday I brought in Swimmy to share with the kids. I figured that I would entertain myself by doing a readaloud, and maybe model it to the teachers as well. I showed Maria -- one of the teachers -- the book, and she immediately grabbed it out of my hands in excitement. Two hours later, there stands Maria, stealing my lesson and doing a phenomenal reading of Swimmy to 65 3rd graders. She stopped to ask questions, translated, had them act out swimming, talked about adjectives...it was wonderful. The kids were enthralled. I wanted to hug her. The next day, as a follow up activity, she had them summarize it in siswati (I suggested that she also ask them to extend the story "...what do you think swimmy and his friends do next?" but apparently that was a little much for kids who aren't even used to repeating in their own words, let alone making up their own things to talk about. Baby steps.)
On Wednesday I also taught what they deemed a "lesson", and I deemed "goofing around because its a holiday" about Halloween. I explained the concept of jack-o-lanterns...the looks on their faces were priceless. Think about the concept of pumpkin carving for a second, its pretty weird. So we drew our own jack-o-lanterns, and then I had them put on masks that they had made for homework and go trick-or-treating for stickers. Apparently the siswati for "trick or treat" is "Trickatricka!!" and I consider that a perfectly valid cultural adaptation. Then we talked a bit about their masks, and I had all of them write poems in English and Siswati about who they were. It was great. I don't claim educational value, but I did get some excellent photos.
After school, Tom, Sarah, myself, and any respective siblings we could find (or steal in Sarah's case) decided to get together for some pumpkin carving. Because you can't have a real halloween without jack-o-lanterns, can you? Unfortunately, what with being in the wrong hemisphere and all, South Africa is a little low on pumpkins at the moment. So we opted for carving butternut-o-lanterns, which worked equally well. Soon a small pack of grade 5 boys wandered over to see what ridiculous thing the crowd of white people was doing. Fortunately Sarah had brought face paint, and I just happened to have some bubbles with me (stickers, bubbles, shiny beads -- the peace corps volunteers essential kit). Soon we had a full on halloween carnival happening!! Here's Tom carving and arranging the lanterns, there's a couple of toddlers running around chasing bubbles, here's a boy with clown face paint. It was awesome. Tomorrow, I'll post pictures.