Thinker Spot

The yellow piece of paper with its big fat black letters printed in bold is neatly laminated. Stuck on the side of the classroom cupboard it is meant to be seen as students walk into the class. But they barely do, since they are too busy with their own lives. The yellow poster proclaims our current president's words: "Children should be in class, on time, learning, being respectful of their teachers and each other, and DO THEIR HOMEWORK" - President Jacob Zuma (7 August 2009) Hmmm... sounds like presidential support for what teachers are trying to achieve day in and day out, lesson after lesson... Alas, with little success it seems. My Grade 11s wrote a cycle test three days ago. Yesterday I started marking. The first paper I opened screamed at me! The student wrote "useless dupless" all over the question paper. I could not help but take it personally.  The president's words brought some relief. Or did it really? Indeed, can it? The president is far-remo...

With the amount of work to be completed by the end of term heaping up like a mountain it seems impossible to accomplish. 'A bridge too far', 'A mountain too high'... Given the fact that I am a student too, it means that my term as teacher more or less coincides with my term as student. Assessment, marking, writing exams, marking others' cycle tests, and so forth... Im sure you get the picture. ... and then there is the prospect of new plans... new challenges for the year ahead -- all in the name of reviving school-based education. It was particularly apt then that I started to look for inspiration. It takes a lot of energy and will power to mark a stack of papers... all while I am thinking of my own examination that is looming. It takes even more guts and raw courage to put a bold plan on the table in the hope that management will accept it as a way to move forward. See, I have a deep-seated belief that education -- throughout the whole spectrum in South Africa --...

During the past week or so I have become acutely aware of the lack of a culture of learning amongst some of the pupils I teach. Still continuing with my journey of discovery into the state of Government-school education in an urban school in Johannesburg (South Africa), I am completely taken aback by the range of excuses I must listen to: My textbook is too heavy and I don't want to carry it around the whole day I don't have my books here today Why must I take my bag off my table or open any books? Sir, the exercise you have given us to complete for marks is unfair. Why must I now learn MovieMaker? I thought we will only write a cycle test and a class test. This is really unfair. (This is so strange, considering Sir Ken Robinson's views that schools are killing creativity.) and so the list goes on... (I feel compelled to have video cameras installed in my classroom since this is the kind of footage that parents need to see). I think, once I have collected enough ev...

We all know the story of the guy who, in an effort to save them, was walking on the beach and kept on throwing back sea stars that washed ashore. On seeing how many there were, a passer-by commented on the 'lost effort', upon which the guy answered that 'even saving one' would made a difference, even then if only to that 'one that was saved'... And so my quest to experience secondary education 'first-hand' carries on at an urban school in Johannesburg, South Africa. The profile of learners vary, with a predominant number of them being black -- other races are well represented too. What this means is that in a decade's time a predominant 'white' school has become a 'predominant black school'. This in itself merely reflects the changes currently taking place within South Africa itself -- a school being a mirror of what's happening in the communities it serves. The racial shift is accompanied by a class-shift as well, as economic p...