February 13, 2018
Yesterday
ended on such incredible energy. I don’t know how I can write about anything
else. But the day was our first at Isilimela Comprehensive School, and there’s
so much to describe.
I wish
you had a student’s voice here, someone for whom all experiences were fresh and
new, because last year when I experienced township schooling for the first
time, the experience was so different from everything I knew. I will later
provide a chunk of last year’s text so I can relay some of that sharpened observation.
The day
started with Monday morning assembly, a special one for the whole school, and
not because the Americans had arrived. The great hall was blasting music from a
huge sound system that came with the visiting speaker and his team. Classes
lined up before the stage as they do for the Monday assemblies, but whenever a
popular gospel song was pumped out of those tall speakers, students would
scream in appreciation. The speaker began, call and response—it’s going to be a
nice day it’s going to be a nice day—today is a happy day today a happy day.
And then he told us his story, crying out, he was angry, he never listened to
his teachers, he was bitter, he never knew his father. He told of a woman with
an abusive husband who nevertheless had five children by him; but by the time
she had a sixth, the husband disappeared, but only after he kicked her in a
ninth month pregnant stomach, putting her in the hospital, the baby seemingly
dead. But this baby miraculously survived—and that baby is myself, he said. The
speaker spoke of acting out, of cutting another student with a razor and of
blood all over the ground. As he told his story, students gasped in surprise
and shock, intakes of breath from all over the hall. Our students were surely
rapt by all this, but not prepared for the coda, because we were in school: his
life was turned around by God, by a Jesus that didn’t judge and only loved,
that experienced great pain of his own. And what was this like for our
Roosevelt students? I doubt they’ve experienced this charismatic messaging before,
even in their houses of worship if they have them, let alone the auditoriums of
their publicly funded schools. The relationships between schooling and
religion, between life and passion and the interactions of the social,
spiritual and practical world have no thick distinguishing lines here as they
do in America.
And
these divisions disappear in the classroom as well—not that we experienced any
moment of religious teaching in any of the classes here. But the teachers are
not shy about imparting moral lessons, about speaking of attitude, love of
family, expansiveness and preparation for life. We see it in many ways, and not
all ways Seattle students might absorb easily. When given the opportunity,
students asked me in one class what I do to punish learners. And affectionate
but frustrated thumps and shoves on the back from teacher to student and swats
on the arm is not an uncommon sight.
Last
year, I additionally said these things about the classroom experience at
Isilimela in Langa.
February 15, 2017
Today was students’ first shadow day
at Isilimela. Afterwards, some complained of a boring day when some teachers
never showed up to class and others went through rote lessons copied off the
internet and read off paper and then re-copied by students from the blackboard.
But we also saw some chalk thrown and knuckles rapped and students made to
kneel for a period, which doesn’t sound so boring to me; and some students just
really enjoyed their classes, period.
My own first experience involved the
first period class of the English department chair. She was going over how to
write an essay, and the five types of essays. I taught it for her. I thought I
nailed it, actually, involving students in questions about purposes of writing
books or poetry or newspaper articles and how that applied to different genres
of essays and how the planning process was different depending on the process
and whether or not a writer had a strong sense of subject; I spoke slowly and
clearly and always asked about words I wasn’t sure if they knew; I made good
eye contact to assess understanding and asked questions and called individual
kids into the conversation. I made students laugh and also nod with serious
understanding. And by the end, I felt that students might even be excited with
ideas of their own about what they might write, whether they were approaching a
narrative or argumentative subject.
But the next period, the teacher
demonstrated her own process, which involved reading, with the students, off
the board, and having them finish the ends of her sentences. The language
learning involved this level of reading and vocabulary reinforcement, I was
told; and I too went ahead and repeated the things she had us chant. But by the
end and from the beginning, I was thinking of Paulo Freire and the ways I tried
to engage minds and many ways this process of repetition seemed to do less –
for the imagination and for thought, and even for engagement and skill. But
this is what I would see over and over during the day.
It was similar but farther behind
than Hungary, where the lack of resources such as available paper and copy
machines and books and workbooks means an entirely different pedagogy, and
information is transmitted through collection and repetition.
I went to the room of another teacher
who welcomed me like a king, conspicuously wiping down a seat for me in the
middle of the room at back, and then telling me he was going to act as though I
were invisible – which is the absolute opposite of what he ended up showing. In
every instance, he demonstrated his acute awareness and even nervousness about
me, apologizing for the way they were doing things, explaining how these
students were not natural to English, checking to make sure I agreed with his
pronouncements on conjunctive adjectives, which I couldn’t always do, because,
for example, I’d never used whence in a sentence before, though I knew well
enough and could explain whenceforth. He seemed entirely on his guard and
embarrassed, though his English was excellent, and in fact, he did make
multiple errors I was not very interested in telling him about: how would it
hurt students when he claimed that “nowadays” was more appropriate to say than
“in these days”? He kept me in his room through the next period, or at least
half of it, and we talked about race and Trump and African love and African
foolishness.
The final period of the day, I taught
a poetry lesson. I was trying to get in this man’s room. I’d heard students
were working on a lesson, and he wasn’t in there, because they were just
answering questions for the hour. But I wanted to talk to him first. He was
wandering around the halls. When I eventually caught up with him, the class was
half over, and I told him I heard students were answering questions about a
poem, and asked him if I could possibly help them with this. He said, Sure! and
walked me into the room, where I introduced myself and stared at the page for a
couple minutes while students waited. Then I went through, having students read
through stanzas, going through the words students didn’t know (no way they were
going to answer those workbook questions, based on what they didn’t know), and
then going through meanings with my full body and poetic self until I could
imbue the room with meaning. Then we’d go through the questions, which were
things like, why does the poet like the woman (because she’s a bronze beauty).
I finished 75% of the poem and 50% of
the questions by the time that half of the period was over. It felt satisfying,
but I was tired, too, maybe from having only slept four hours combined the
previous two nights and missing breakfast and lunch recovered through fruit and
power bars.
After school, Isilimela and Roosevelt
were joined by Bellville. I eventually led everyone in song, accompanied by the
guitar I borrowed from Mandy from Bellville.
Hot and worn down by the end
Back to February 13, 2018:
The day
ended in Mimi’s art room, a place of creativity and warmth where Isilimela HFB
members have gravitated and now habituated as their home every day for lunch.
Roosevelt and Isilimela students were reviewing what they knew (and how they
came to know it) about the Gugulethu Seven, the razing of District 6, the great
cattle killing, and the death of Nelson Mandela, focused by these four
questions: What elements of history and social discourse created this event;
what are the elements that are most difficult to overcome; what solutions have
been proposed or provided; and what current moments, events, structures offer
opportunities for resolution. When I first saw the questions, I thought they
were directed to the event of the creation and evolution of Hands for a Bridge,
which is certainly interesting too, and I think we’ll also work with that; but
for today, the focus was specifically on South African history. Mimi, after
directing the conversation through student knowledge and thought, spoke to the
importance and continuing presence of such history, and then she said the thing
that I think I will take with me to my own teaching more than anything else on
this trip: She grabbed a student and said, Can you sing me a song to take me
out of the misery I am in?
And
then we sang. And we danced. Until we were deliriously full with each other.
This is the moment I was leading to.
First,
about singing and dancing in the face of misery. Mimi and Pum had talked to me
about this. Happy or sad, we must dance, we must sing. And with the challenges
they face, the poverty, the systemic barriers, the joy here is a great wonder
to our students, but it’s there. Polly Olsen said that tribal elders also sing
and dance after hard conversations, and that she never leaves discussions to
such despair because she too knows this wisdom—to face the world honestly, but
to return to heart and cheer and love. It’s a wisdom I didn’t have until
yesterday: in my own teaching, especially in my Margins and Centers class, a UW
in the High School course that centers on social justice issues, too often I
have ended class in a dark, hard place. And then students just go from talking
about the violence done in our hurting, wounded world to their pre-Calc class.
Sing, dance.
Second,
the singing and dancing itself. What joy.
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