Month: July 2009

An Interesting Preposition

22 July 09

During our final week in South Africa, we were able to get into the schools of the teacher’s we had worked with the first week at Liwa Primary. I asked to pair up with Rachelle, who teaches G8 English and G9 Econ at Siyazakha Primary School. Her energy and excitement after the first week were infectious and I wanted to see her in her element.

I was not disappointed. Working with 40+ learners in a classroom, Rachelle designed lessons that were engaging and tailored to her learners’ needs. That’s something many teachers state-side could benefit from.

Her English learners’ final task at the end of the previous term had been to compose a journal entry about an event in their lives. From her marking of the tasks, Rachelle noted that the bulk of her learners were struggling with the proper choice and use of prepositions in their writing. A quick survey of the students’ writing confirmed frequent composition such as, “My mother has me go to the store to her money on the bank.”

To review, Rachelle first wrote the word “preposition” on the chalk board that stood on its end in front of its former mount. (The boards had been removed over the holidays in the rooms that would eventually be receiving SMART Boards sometime in the coming months.) From there, she drew a box around, “position” and asked her learners what words came to mind when they saw the word “position.” Within minutes, the class had constructed a mindmap of the word which allowed Rachelle to explain, “A preposition is a word that’s used to help explain something’s position, location or place compared to something else.”

She then asked a handful of learners to position themselves at specific points around the classroom and then had their classmates describe where they were in the classroom and identify the prepositions in the sentences they constructed. Everyone could be successful and the entire class was visibly engaged.

Content her review had achieved its desired result and running out of time, Rachelle assigned homework. Each learner was to find 5 pictures from magazines, newspapers and the like and paste each picture on a piece of paper. Next to each picture, the learners were to write one sentence describing something in the picture as it related to the location of something else. As a final touch, the learners were to underline the prepositions in each of their sentences.

At first, my reaction to all of this was to admire the lesson, but worry about its content given the fact that these were Grade 8 learners. Then reality set in. The mother tongue of the children in the townships is Xhosa. They only begin formal English instruction in Grade 4. Considering their training was only 3.5 years old, they were exactly where I’d expect learners of their experience to be if not a little ahead of the game.

This all works toward the point that given an extreme lack of resources, an over-crowded classroom, and personal stories from each learner that could easily have become an insurmountable barrier, this was quality instruction based on the needs of the learners involved. It all-encompassing – in a few of the classrooms I observed during my time at the school, a class’ teacher was simply missing. And, it wasn’t ideal – I’m sure not each and every learner got the full, personal attention he or she would have benefitted from. What is was was exactly what all strong teachers do, making the most out of what they have. I’m not sure more can be asked than that.

The Death of Ritual

20 July 09

Today was a down day during which we debriefed the previous two weeks with Edunova and then had time to ourselves to decompress. Decompression and stray thoughts lead to what’s below.

Becoming a Man:

At 18, Xhosa males are taken into the bush where they become men. According to Khonaya, our guide for our township tours, this ritual is about “learning the identity of the tribe” and “grasping the true essence of ritual.” During their time in this conclave, the boys are circumcised.

During the ritual, Khonaya told  us, the boys are not allowed to flinch or show signs of pain. “Being masculine,” he said, “you have to handle the pain.”

This was just about as much as he could tell us about the ritual as the men are not allowed to divulge or describe what happens once they return.

In fact, during yesterday’s braai, when Terry asked one of the Xhosa Edunova facilitators about when he was taken into the bush, all of the women at the table excused themselves and Terry was told men weren’t allowed to talk about what happened in the bush. 

“I have a younger brother,” Khonaye had told us, “and all I can do is support him when the time comes.”

Sharon asked if there were any differences once the men returned home. Khonaya said sometimes “circumcised boys in the classroom expect to be treated differently” especially by female teachers.

I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around all of this for over two weeks now, and I just don’t think I can. More to the point, this is one of the pieces that creates a breech in my ability to understand the culture here. I’ve no basis for comparison. While I’m certain this ritual and others like it have far-reaching social implications, I simply don’t know what I don’t know.

When I see the community that exists here, the strength of the social structure, I begin to worry that the plurality of America also means we’ve watered down or lost our rituals along the road to coexistence. While I’m not suggesting the adoption of this particular ritual, I do wonder if the lack of a shared threshold experience leaves most of our youth without a clear sense of whom they are and where they come from.

To the Island

18 July 09

Nelson Mandela is 91.

Prior to arriving in Africa, I’ll admit, Mandela was really one of the few national icons with whom I was familiar. Even that knowledge wasn’t appreciably deep.

Having had a few weeks in Cape Town and traveling within the province of Western Cape, I’ve gained a better understanding of what this man has meant to his country and what he continues to represent.

One of the things that strikes me about driving or walking through the townships or working with educators in their schools here is the air of hope I can’t help but breath in. The people I’ve met have hope and faith that their schools will improve and provide stronger, more connected educations for their learners.

Yes, they will admire their problems with the same rockstar status of any other group of teachers I’ve met, but when all’s said and done, they are hopeful.

More than anything else, Mandela embodies that hope.

This made visiting Robben Island, the prison island where Mandela spent 18 years of his life, on his birthday especially poignant.

I remember, as a teenager, watching Mandela’s release from prison, and knowing, but not understanding that something important was happening. It wasn’t until the boat ride on the Susan Kruger (the boat that first ferried political prisoners to Robben Island in 1961) that I started to grasp (if only feebly) the what it would have meant to be imprisoned for 18 years for holding onto an idea.

During each day of their imprisonment, the political prisoners on the island were forced to work 8 hours a day in one of the island’s limestone quarries. The stone was eventually used to pave the roads of the island and some of Cape Town. Initially, though, none of it was put to any actually use. It was meant as a soul-crushing exercise in futility.

What struck me, though. What truly hit home was the walk back to the prison from the quarry. Just over the rise at the pit’s mouth, Cape Town comes into view. As my tour group moved back along the same route, I imagined what it must have been like to toil purposelessly for 8 hours a day for 18 years and to return to your cell each day with a clear view of the home and country you love so much but to which you were forbidden to return.

In some ways, I wonder if South African teachers, if not many educators around the world, aren’t facing the same struggle – working each day for 8 hours for often unclear reasons only to come out of the pit at the end of the day feeling where they want to be is just as clear, but just as distant as when they they began.

I choose to believe the desperation is misplaced. Yes, we’ve a long way to go, but our own “long walk to freedom” is well under way.

Taking Off

Just a quick note here. We’re heading to the Cape Town International Airport in a few minutes so that we can begin the Kenya leg of our trip. By all accounts, I know Kenya will be a different world, and I’m getting my brain ready for that. I’ll be compiling my thoughts on our flights today and hopefully have several posts ready by the time we land. If I can find a connection, I’ll even post them.

One thing is for certain, nothing is certain.

Nothing is Simple

 

As promised, I’ve been working on processing the first few days of our time here in CPT.

Here’s a thing that struck me. It struck me strongly and quickly. On our tour of Langa Township, our guide Khonaye commented on the children running around. “You’ll notice they’re everywhere,” he said. “Children here will play 5, 6 blocks away from their homes without danger.”

They don’t need to worry about abduction, molestation or violence, he told us.

The community policed itself.

We stood incredulous. Why don’t they have to worry? How does the community police itself?

“If someone does something, there is vigilante justice.”

Let that one settle in.

Now, I’m no proponent of vigilanteism, and I’m all for following the letter of the law. That said, the most heinous thing I can fathom is a crime against a child.

Here, where three families would co-habitate in one room, the children were safe.

In the suburbs of some of the squeaky cleanest of America’s communities, parents forbid their children from crossing the street alone.

Amber Alerts happen too frequently. They happen at all.

In Philadelphia, violence directly impacts my learners with a disturbing regularity.

This is not to sugar-coat things. One of the first things Captonians will tell you is their city has the most violent crime in the world. Mugging stories are omnipresent.

Still, within the cobbled together communities where corrugated metal is a frequent building material, the children can play safely.

It’s far from perfect, but it’s striking.

Given such community protection of the children, where is the ire when thieves steal entire labs worth of computers or dig up and steal the wiring and ethernet cable? These tools offer gateways allowing learners access to the rest of the world. Ignoring computers, where is the community fundraising to provide pencils, paper, books and erasers so that teachers can create gateways allowing access to the worlds that exist within learners’ own minds?

I’m not dictating what should be done. I’ve seen the dangers of outsiders pronouncing edicts for improvement on existing systems.

What I’m trying to do here is think aloud to bridge the disconnect going on in my mind.

Nothing is simple.

Standing Long Jump

 

Part of the planning phase of our trip out here included the idea of facilitating a leap frogging of development of ICT skills and integration within Captonian classrooms. “Mistakes were made,” to quote Pres. Reagan, in our development of skills and integration techniques. What if we could help start the discussion here halfway through, rather than at the very beginning.

Do teachers need to learn PowerPoint, Excel and Word in a world of OpenOffice and Google Docs? Don’t start with the proprietary when you can jump to the free and/or transparent.

The last couple of weeks, though, have me rethinking that thesis for a few reasons.

1) Proprietary software and hardware companies are on the ground here selling their products and establishing early brand recognition and loyalty.

While I would rather all the players got a fair shake, it’s not as though Firefox is walking into schools and offering to set up labs or fund laptop carts. The drive to increase market share is pushing companies into schools down here and, like it or not, that’s getting the tools into the hands of the learners.

2) The connectivities not there to ensure freedom of search.

I know much of what I know about what’s available online because I have not only the time but the bandwidth and connection points to graze the interwebs for new information, tools and thinking. That’s not necessarily the case here. Be it download caps, narrow bandwidth, lack of access or whatever, the freedom of search isn’t provided for a wide enough segment of the online population. Google Docs are just as cool, but not nearly as useful if your computer lab is still running IE6. If someone has described every problem as a nail, all you want is a hammer.

3) A natural technological evolutionary path might exist.

My ability to function in ActivStudio, WordPress, Wordle, et al. is owed to the fact that, like it or not, Windows was my primer. Proficiency with Windows 95 on my family’s old Gateway 2000 provided me with a familiarity and ease of navigation once I moved to OS X or Ubuntu. If today’s tools are the result of a technological evolutionary pattern, it’s beginning to make sense that mastery then innovation then creation of the next tools will require an initial understanding of the basic architecture and then a following of the natural progression.

Given the thinking above, I’m still holding out hope that meeting the original goal is possible. Given the proper resources, the development of ICT skills and integration can experience a mutation and jump along the evolutionary path.

Powering the Grid

7-14-09

 

I was going to get to bed before 11 tonight, but I promised myself I would write everyday whilst I’m here.

I’ve some thoughts brewing on Monday’s workshop with EduNova and the principals’ boot camp, but they’re not quite ready for prime time.

Instead, let me recount the fulfillment of a prophesy.

Before I embarked on my trip, I was told I would hear a certain phrase at some point, likely multiple points, along the way. Today, it happened.

Amid a workshop in which the assembled Khanya facilitators were in the second-floor computer lab at Glendale Secondary School in Mitchells Plains, everything went dark. I don’t mean that we lost the Internet or that the server went down, I mean that the power was gone. Each of the 30+ computers went blank, the lights shut off and the projector I was using for demonstration wasn’t quite so demonstrative.

My face, I think, registered the appropriate surprise circulating in my brain because one of the facilitators toward the front said, “Welcome to Africa!”

The room laughed, and I took a moment to marvel at the truly genuine tone in my host’s voice as those I was participating in the foundation level of some sort of right of passage.

A few minutes later, the power was back and we rebooted.

The second time the power cut out today was during the first quarter of Noble’s afternoon session. I sat watching and expecting Noble to receive a greeting such as I had. He did not.

The power had gone off whilst one of the Khanya facilitators was asking a question, and she didn’t miss a beat in her sentence with a worthless tip of the hat to the fact that we were no longer with power. She had a point to make.

The same thing happened when the power returned the second time and when it cut out and returned the third, fourth and fifth times. Indeed, Noble was mid-sentence when one of the reboots happened, and it didn’t phase him at all.

All of this is to say that the educators in that room today adapted, rather, had already adapted, to the occurrence of something that’s happened to me maybe twice in my time as a teacher (and only then during intense storms).

My primary reaction was one of admiration. Messages were being sent and they were to be powered by their own ideas – not the room’s ambient electricity. We were making do with what we had.

My secondary reaction was one of cultural comparison. These outages took place throughout what would normally be school hours on a Tuesday and severely handicapped the connected learning possible within the school’s computer labs. The desktop computers cut out and had to be rebooted each time. Had conditions reached such a point in my own education, I can imagine ire on the part of my parents and community members. I’ve been trying draft a scenario all day in which my family’s reaction to multiple power outages would be simply, “Welcome to Illinois!”

My own brain answers back, “But this isn’t Illinois. Conditions are different. Politics are different. Needs are different. Thereby, expectations are different.” I get that, but only have my own experiences to compare against. The longer I’m here, the more diversified my experiences will be.

I’ve come to learn the day’s outages were more frequent than normal, but that SA’s infrastructure lags behind its population growth. Throughout the country, there are scheduled rolling outages whilst the government builds the nuclear plants to sustain the need.

I suppose I wanted outrage from the people in the room today. Outrage would have signaled these events were not in keeping with expectations for the schools. Even more, it would have signaled a lack of acceptance.

Educators in the US have been experiencing rolling blackout for the last few decades if only in the figurative sense. The power’s been cut so frequently that our expectations of our own abilities to connect and network ourselves and our learners with the outside world have sunken consistently. More frightening, our near acceptance of inconsistent access to the power to drive our own profession and careers has become commonplace.

If educators here are to have a hope of cutting class sizes of 45-55 learners, they must first demand power.

If educators in the US are to have a hope of owning our profession, we must first demand power.

The One About the Baboon

As Ian was leaving the van he said, “I wonder how smart the baboons actually are.”
I was sitting securely belted in the van. Sharon, in the row behind me wanted out which would necessitate me also vacating the vehicle.
I didn’t want to get out.
Everyone else on the team was out, armed with their cameras, ready to capture the moment.
The moment, by the way, was a group of baboons entertaining tourists next to the mountain road we were taking to Cape Point.
I didn’t want to get out.
We’d passed to styles of signs that were pretty clear in their message. The first was simply an exclamation mark sitting atop the word “Baboons” in bold lettering.
The second was the more officious and daunting in its message, “Caution! Baboons are WILD animals…” That was enough to keep me in the car.
Behind me I could feel Sharon’s growing momentum toward exiting the vehicle. I got out to let her photograph the playful monkeys.
I decided to stay out as well, flashing on Nev Campbell answering the phone alone in the house in Scream.
It was as I was rolling up the window as a precaution that we learned “how smart the baboons actually are.”
Finding 1: Baboons can open car doors.
The Alpha Male, we’ll call him (Sprinkles), opened the driver’s door of the van. We’d later come to realize the more officious signs had encouraged passengers to close their windows and lock their doors.
Sprinkles didn’t stay in the driver’s seat long. In a flash, he was to the third row, picking up and tasting empty plastic bags for signs of food. He was on to something.
Finding 2: Baboons are not to be messed with.
Noble, in an attempt to embody his name, opened the rear driver’s-side door and attempted to shame Sprinkles out of the van. “No! No!” he yelled. “Out! Out!”
As it turns out, the status of Alpha Male is not so easily transferrable.
Finding 2.5: Baboons have large incisors.
(see annotation of Finding 2)
Finding 3: Baboons aren’t good with pockets.
As it turned out, I was the only member of the team who had packed snacks for our day trip to Cape Point. Sprinkles, equipped with an above-average proboscis detected my snacks and evacuated the vehicle through the rear driver’s-side door (all doors were open at this point. He left with my bookbag. Once clear of the van, he sat square in the middle of the road and attempted to find the food he’d smelled.
My oranges were in a side pocket intended for holding drinks. With no zippers, the oranges were easy access. They should have been, anyway. Sprinkles struggled with finding exactly how to get to the oranges. Perhaps from previous highway robbery, he knew of zippers, first trying to open the bad with his teeth and then with those beautiful opposable thumbs. Those damned thumbs.
In one pocket, he found the fruit leather I’d been hoping would last me to Kenya. Sprinkles ate it wrapper and all. Then, he found the Clif Bar. This one he opened before eating.
Finding 4: People will stop to watch a monkey.
While all of this was going on, traffic was appropriately stopped in both directions on the road and the other tourists who had already stopped to watch the monkeys had come over to photograph and video tape. “Who’s bag is that?” they all asked mid-laugh. I raised my hand and nodded.
Fruit leather and Clif Bar disposed of, Sprinkles returned to the oranges. Sitting in the road with approximately 20 onlookers recording the event to share with their friends and family when they returned to their international homes, he began to empty the contents of my pack into the road. My water bottle flew one way. My iPod flew the other. My journal was dropped on the pavement along with a book I’m reading on the teaching of reading in the content areas. Then the headphones and some stray papers. Then, a stuffed bear I travel with to pose for pictures with important landmarks.
Truly, life was complete.
Finding 5: A baboon will not leave a find until he’s finished it all.
Sprinkles eventually worked the first orange from the pocket and began to eat it. (They’re good peelers.) All the while, Noble had secured two granola bars from Sharon, broken them to pieces and tried to distract Sprinkles by throwing them a little farther down the road. At some point, one of the volleys proved successful and victory was ours until Sprinkles hurried back to his find and fished for the second orange.
Finding 5.5: Baboons are messy eaters.
Dripping baboon saliva and orange juice on my bag and belongings, it almost appeared Sprinkles was posing for the assembled onlookers as they chuckled and chortled at the tableau staged before them. I just wanted my stuff back. As Sprinkles finished off the last of the orange, it became clear he could sense the meal was over and he wandered off. Sharon, Jody and I ran up and shooed away a mother and her baby and another juvenile baboon who were intent on the spoils. Finding 2.5 isn’t quite as true about the little ones.
Finding 6: See image below.

Something Else Not to Take for Granted

 

Wikipedia was a hit.

I know it seems a small thing, and Noble looks at me almost comically when I get excited about it, but Wikipedia was a hit in Sharon’s and my last session of our week working with Captonian teachers at Liwa Primary School.

In all honesty, I’d almost forgotten to bring it up in the week, until it hit me on Thursday.

Working with what are slower-than-ideal connection speed, teachers here must be conservative in their use of graphic-heavy sites like flickr or continuously-updating tools like Google Docs. Yes, the connectivity and speed will improve with time, but that’s hardly welcome news to teachers who want to put their learners to work in their computer labs now using current and relevant resources.

And so we showed them Wikipedia.

Monday, when answering the question of what ICT integration could do to help successful learning happen in their schools, many of the teachers offered the almost cliche promise that lies in connecting their learners with the world. Here, they were finding something that did just that almost in real time. To illustrate this point, we looked up the ethnic clashes in China which had begun the day before our workshops commenced. Their interest was audible.

Even more impressive – Wikipedia in Xhosa, the mother tongue of many black Africans. Or Wikipedia in Afrikaans. 

Before setting them out to play and explore, we had a discussion of the possible implications for having their learners interact with and contribute to a reference bank in which they are woefully underrepresented. Each school can literally write the (e)book on the history and culture of its people and township. Imagine primary school learners in the townships contributing content about the places they live while older learners at partner schools in North America study life in South Africa and help to edit and proofread the content. 

Meanwhile, the overall online community benefits from a much needed accrual of firsthand information. 

The opportunities locally are intriguing as well. South African learners are taught English starting in Grade 4. Wikipedia in Xhosa has only 122 entries. What then, if high schools and primary schools serving the same townships partner so that the high school learners build content connected to the needs of the primary school learners? The implications here cross all content areas and disciplines – from maths learners explaining polynomials to physics learners explaining kinetic energy.

While we oftentimes talk about using wikis to build knowledge repositories that can be used by our classes for years to come, over time these begin to lose authenticity and grow stale. For the South African students, though, they have an encyclopedia in front of them waiting to be written. It harkens back to the compilation of the first edition of the OED.

It stands as one of the most exciting offerings of the Internet (one I’m reminded daily here that I’ve been taking for granted) – all knowledge, one place.

Oh, That’s Right!

In South African educational parlance, teachers don’t teach “students,” they teach “learners.” I like that.

If the goal is lifelong learning, then we should start calling ourselves that as early as possible. I’d imagine it’s much easier to think of oneself as a learner in adulthood if you’re used to it from the time you enter school.

A difference exists between “student-centered” education and “learner-centered” education. One seems more all-inclusive, no?

It happened this week. We started Week 1 here in Cape Town with a plan for a week of student-centered workshops. It was to be a beautiful blend of pedagogy’s brightest shining all-stars (Traditional v. Progressive, learning in the Information Age, backward design, etc.) together with the shiniest and most collaborative of tools (digital storytelling, wikis, Google Apps, etc.). It was what was key for the students. In our heads.

But we had to become learners as well. Teaching pedagogy is all well and good in its place. Without a frame of reference for what it means to truly integrate ICT tools, though, the pedagogy doesn’t carry much weight.

We needed to learn what our learners wanted and needed – time to play.

Not unlike too many teachers in the States, teachers here need time to play with the tools at their disposal – tools their schools’ leaders are expecting them to come back ready to use.

We learned to give them what they wanted and what they needed.

The second half of the day Wednesday was dedicated to Word and PowerPoint – inserting pictures, transitions, text wrap, layout, design. Today’s sessions focused on Excel, Smart Boards, experimenting with PowerPoint and searching through flickr.

Yes, I realize pedagogy is important. We must be mindful of why we do what we do with whatever tools we use. Before that, we must experiment, we must be creative, we must fail and learn from that failure.

At the end of the PowerPoint session at the end of the day, our teachers still sat playing with pictures, text, transitions, research from online. They were constructing meaning from something they found interesting and saw held immediate value for their learners.

They were not so enthusiastic about backward design.

At the beginning of the week, Noble said in his welcome to the teachers that our team would be learning as much from the Capetonian teachers as they would be learning from us.

He was correct.