RIP

Yesterday was an excellent day. In the morning I met with the Principal and head teachers at one of my schools to discuss our ideas for the coming year – by which we all meant my last 7 months in Steenbok (!). We discussed mainly two ideas at great length – a possible career fair for the 6th and 7th graders, and the creation of a school-wide vision for the coming years.
The impetus for the career fair is simple – you ask kids what they want to be when they grow up and they pull seemingly random (yet standard) answers out of a hat. “I want to be a teacher, a doctor, an engineer…” Which are all great of course, but then you ask them how they plan to do it and the answer is once again standard: “I don’t know.” They don’t know what’s really out there, what subjects they need to study, what school they have to go to, how to get a scholarship, or even to fill out a basic job application or create a resume. So yesterday afternoon, two teachers and I sat down to brainstorm every career we could think of in the area. We came up with over 50 in less than an hour, and realized it would be a little bit difficult to have them all get up and talk one by one for only one day. Then another plan began to take shape: We’re going to hold a career week, instead.
The first day will feature a speaker who will describe various job opportunities and possibilities in the area along with – well, I’m not really sure what she’s going to talk about, but she’s a local something or other and the teachers thought it would be a good idea to have her come and kick off the whole thing. That same day we’ll give the kids one of those ridiculous interest/skill inventories that’s supposed to tell you if you’ll make a better architect or taxi driver. (I know they’re absurd and label-y and probably not all that useful anyways, but I have a feeling the kids have literally NO IDEA what angle to begin looking from, so at least we can give them a starting point.) We’ll also give them a time table and summary of the various speakers who are coming over the next week to take home to their parents. The idea here is two-fold: One, trigger parental discussions about the child’s possible future; and two, invite anybody in the community who wants to come. We’re going to make this open to anybody who’s interested in stopping by and learning about possible careers. In a community with 70% unemployment, I think we may get a visitor or two. Over the next few days, we’ll have hopefully lots and lots of people from different jobs and places coming to talk to our kids and tell them how to get where they’re going in different sessions throughout the day. The speakers will be put in a certain classroom at a certain time, and the kids can decide whom they want to go listen to.
I know this all sounds pretty complicated, but what’s really cool is how simple it actually is. Invite people to come talk to the kids at a certain place and time, tell the parents about it, invite any community members who are interested. The other amazing thing is that its not just me setting things up. This is truly a group effort – in fact the teachers are the ones who came up with pretty much all of the careers, the plan for a week-long event, and the logistics of it all. I think that’s really cool, and I also think its something I probably couldn’t have done in the beginning. Finally, after a year and a half at site, we’ve started to reach this point of planning together, working together, not just me trying to drag people along. I love that. Too bad I’ve now only got effectively 6 months left to enjoy it. Its honestly enough to make me think about extending for a third year…except that I really, really can’t wait to get back to showers. And microbrews.

We also talked about the idea of creating a school vision, which was actually an extension of a conversation we’d had back in November, that was initiated not by me, but by sever of the deputy principals. I want to help each school create a school vision of quite literally what they want to see when they look out the office door. What do they want their school to look like? Where do they want it to go? And how should we get there.* We came up with a long, ridiculous process, but its one that I think is really suited to the school and will work. We’re going to ask everybody in the school – everybody – what they want to see. From Grade R to Grade 7, teachers, SMT, general workers, the SGB, and parents. Then we’re going to sit down in what I can only assume will be a series of mind-numbing, hair-pulling (for me) meetings, and try to find common ground among all of those different desires (though I’m betting most of them will be pretty close). The result will be our school’s vision, and we can start planning how to get there. Sure it seems a little bit bulky and not terribly efficient, but I think it will work. Once again, the great thing is that we’re not doing things my way, we’re doing them our way.

Those were the two big collaborative efforts of the day, but it was the two smaller personal ones from which I got to take a pretty big feeling of personal satisfaction.

I’ve started teaching world history to one little girl in grade 6 during her normal English period. She spent most of her school time in Joburg, and consequently already speaks English better than pretty much anybody else in the village (possibly including me). Spending her time reciting, “The ball is on the table. The boy sees the ball. The boy is playing with the ball.” is one of the more useless things I can think of, so her teacher and the principal agreed to let me pull her out during English class when I’m around so that we can work on something together instead. And when I asked, she wanted to learn history. So now the two of us our learning World History. Which I’ve definitely never taught, in addition to never having taught anybody one on one. So this should be fun. But she’s smart, and asks good questions, and together we’ll figure it out.

All of the above is pretty good of course -- career fairs, school visions, world history -- however I’ve definitely been saving the best, the thing that gets me the most excited and of which I am the most proud, for last.
Izora has *not only* mastered the main tune of the alphabet song, *not only* does she mostly get and average of 14-16 of the letters in there when she’s singing it, *not only* has the concept of signing various letters while she does it, BUT: As of yesterday she’s mastered A-C on their own. She can point to them and name them without any help from me. And just like that, this 3 year old is suddenly ahead of half the kids in grade 3. What a smart kid.





*In other words: ‘Quo Vadius.’ Man was Sports Night a good show.

All Tuckered Out

I have more thoughts percolating in my head, but they've yet to make themselves into a coherent post, so it will just be a little bit longer until that goes up. Today is, I guess, my last day of vacation (or my last day before going back to site at least) and after a few days of decompressing in Pretoria I will be more than glad to get back. I have a lot of plans and projects for my last two terms at school, and I can't wait to see just how many we can pull off before August 21st. In the meantime:

Me and Bhutazwa at Amazing Grace on Christmas Day. I may have to smuggle him home at the end of service. (Also, if anybody could explain to me how to rotate pictures on blogger I'd be very happy).


Mom goes on Safari*.


Dad goes on Safari too.

Hippos! What you can't see is the 27 car pileup (plus one very impatient minivan) as everybody tried to get up and down a rail-less one lane cement bridge to the main rest area/lunch stop while simultaneously trying to get as many yawning hippo photos as possible.



And giraffes. Which are very tall. And also very funny looking.


Lions. A whole pride of them came right up to our safari truck (yes, safari truck. With real tourists and everything. I preferred to think of it as a different aspect of wildlife spotting).


An elephant hanging out in Kruger. We saw lots of these. They don't seem to worry about people too much.


Dad looking deeply concerned next to the crocodile ("flatdog") warning sign in Swaziland. We saw a wildebeest body dissapear in less than 2 days.



Mom cooking in my kitchen in Steenbok. We made delicious spaghetti for my family. We thought it was delicious, at least.


Mom and Dad on a hike in Swaziland. Aww.


There were also some very precarious bridges on the way. Fortunately there were not too many crocodiles at this particular bend in the river. (I would also like to know how to rotate this one.)

Dad is king of the mountatin.

New Years dinner in Cape Town, yay! Note the all-tequlia margaritas on the table, and the fact that I wasn't given fair warning in the look on my face.

Long Street in Cape Town on New Year's eve. Its like Mardi Gras, but with more Afrikaans.

An African Jackass penguin. Really. They live in Cape Town on the beach and swim in the Indian Ocean all day. I think this pretty clearly proves that these are the smartest penguins in existence. None of that freezing their tails off March of the Penguin BS for these guys.


All in all, it was a long, tiring, and very satisfying trip.

The parents should theoretically be posting all the rest on snapfish sometime in the near future. When they wake up from their naps.




*Random trivia fact for the day: 'safari' apparently translates to 'walk' in Swahili (which is not siswati, for those of you who may have been confused). This is why you have to go in the biggest, and most petrol intensive vehicle that you can find.

Family Vacation

I need some time to process the last couple of weeks before I post any sort of substantitive blog entry. But in brief, mom and dad came out and we had a really amazing time -- Kruger, Amazing Grace, Steenbok, Swaziland, and Cape town -- all in less than two weeks! It was really great. Here are some photos to prove it:

At the Amazing Grace Children's Center in Malelane, passing out christmas gifts. I think mom bought out at least three different dollar store toy sections.


By "passing out gifts" of course what I actually mean is "putting the box on the ground and letting the riot happen." The kids were actually very very good about sharing everything and playing with all the toys together. No thrown elbows or body checks in sight, just a bunch of really happy kids on christmas.





Where we all live!





Wild dogs in Kruger! We saw these on a night drive. They're incredibly rare, we were very lucky.