Roosevelt students sadly missed a
day or two of Isilimela time because of the sports day on Monday and then a
strike or teacher march on Tuesday; they finally shadowed their buddies on
Friday, which at Isilimela is a shortened schedule (which accounts, but only a
little bit, for the additional noon to two lessons taking place on both
Saturday and Sunday with the teacher, Lulalime Zondi, with whom I was working
Friday, at the extra expense of taxi fare for the learners coming in from
different townships). I encouraged students before school to view their
experiences through two lenses: first, what does it take to teach classes of
between 40-65 students with few paper resources or books; second, what does
education look like in a culture with an oral tradition. Students gathered
after school to reflect on what they saw.
These are some of the things they
reported back:
·
Students talking through the whole class;
·
Students absolutely quiet through the whole
class;
·
A lesson a teacher would not provide because
learners misbehaved the day before;
·
Students not moving through the dismissal bell,
staying;
·
Teacher leaving 10 minutes into class and
returning at the end;
·
Learners staying in the room doing homework when
a teacher didn’t show up;
·
Teacher banging erasers to get attention;
·
A single calculator being shared and passed
around in math class;
·
No posters on the wall;
·
A learner waving away the pain and screaming but
returning his fingertips for the remaining punishment;
·
Teachers saying, Are you following?
·
No one leaving to go to the bathroom during the
lesson.
Now we are here at Melkbosstrand,
on the weekend retreat with all the Hands for a Bridge teachers and students,
making art, playing games, having conversations about race, and walking on the
South Atlantic coast.
This morning Polly told students
that water is the first medicine, and water is our ancestor, that teachers are
ancestors, and that when students make their art, they’re doing so through
their ancestors: acknowledge and open your hearts, she told them, to teachings
of your ancestors. Be grounded, your mind to the ground itself.
Pum moved from there to the
honesty and humility HFB students wear on their backs, calling on them to
finish this sentence: “I am a product of segregation / apartheid / integration,
so I became…” Her statement moves students past several historical layers and
demands students so quickly interpret their history and consider its deeply
personal effects. Then she asked, how comfortable are you talking about race
with your own group of people? Pum let students sit with this before asking
about discussions with a person of another
race—because if the first is hard, then how much more so the next? Buddy groups
made up of Bellville, Isilimela, and Roosevelt then discussed what made them
comfortable and uncomfortable with such discussions, a brilliant way of
allowing students to cross the bridge most proximate to feelings about race,
while also allowing some hard truths to come out. Learners were given time to
speak out to their classmates of different races and cultures—just listen, do
not feel judged or guilty, but really hear.
One student said she was totally
comfortable because she was raised to accept every person as a human being.
White Roosevelt students don’t often say such things in my presence. They
acknowledge their discomfort and say they are afraid of offending, or getting
something wrong, or speaking for someone else who has more right to say. Acknowledging
this discomfort is a first step towards recognizing the racism that pervades so
many institutions and interactions. Is the discomfort because you don’t know
what offends? Interrogating such uneasiness is a way of being honest and seen
in each other’s company; but if people simply pave over all that useful telling
bumpiness by saying I believe everyone’s equal and accept everyone, there’s
little room for authentic witness, connection, understanding, growth, or
healing.
But that is certainly just the
start. When all was said, Pum asked how far they are willing to go. You are
Hands for a Bridge, and I know you speak about equality and connect with each
other, but if you believe in these things, how far are you willing to go?
How much can you speak each
other’s languages, how much have you tried? If you came to this group not
speaking Xhosa, how much Xhosa have you learned? If you came not speaking
Afrikaans, how much Afrikaans have you learned? And students from Roosevelt,
how many words do you know from the tribal languages of your lands? How far are
you willing to go?
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