Week 13 - Professional Blog

 “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”  Nelson Mandela

It’s hard to believe that we are already through our second full week of placement, and despite the first week being full of worries, this week has been one of identifying challenges and becoming familiar with the children and the school environment. When I first
 found out I was going to South Africa for teaching
 practise I imagined teaching in a poor school in a
township, with no running water, no electricity and no lights, so you can imagine my surprise when I first arrived at Cape Recife. The school is built on very impressive grounds, with a number of spacious airy buildings, three swimming pools, football fields, tennis courts, a number of playgrounds with swings and climbing frames and a hostel for those students who live too far away to travel. It definitely was not what I was expecting when I first arrived. However, after my initial delight at the good facilities, I soon realised that my teaching would still be very basic as the classrooms had no computers or projectors or anything technological – just a blackboard and chalk. This lack of resources meant that my teaching was stripped right back to the basics, and although I initially found this intimidating without a projector or computer programmes to hide behind, this week I began to enjoy the task of simply teaching. It is when in an environment as simple as this that your true creativeness and teaching ability comes alive, especially when your aim is to hold the attention of a classroom including 10 children with ADHD. 

Something that has really struck me about the children in my class is the height of respect they have for their teachers and other adults within the class. Every child has addressed me as ‘Mam’, and despite most of the children being excitable during class time, there is an underlying respect for their teacher that is not always seen within Northern Ireland. During my previous placements at home I have seen a number of cases of terrible behaviour and complete lack of respect for others within a number of different children, and so this respect seen within class was refreshing. Each morning the class stand to greet their teacher and any other adults that may be present in class, and it is something that is very absent from classes in Northern Ireland today. The pupils were a delight to spend time with and took great interest in my nationality and home country, and I had the privilege of having a time slot during class when I would bring in money from home and show pictures of Ireland. It’s sad that although these children have such an interest in other countries, many of them will never leave South Africa, and it has made me realise what a privilege it is to have the opportunity to travel so much.

 

Something I have observed within this class is that the teacher’s teaching style seemingly only appeals to visual learners. Every lesson follows the same format and there is very little interaction between learners or varied activities. This is a challenge that I have identified as one that will need to be overcome if I am to successfully teach each individual child within the classroom, and will be achieved mostly through trial and error.

Despite identifying challenges that will need to be addressed within the classroom, I had a number of successful lessons that I feel the children were engaged in, including a basic Spanish lesson that I was given the opportunity to teach, covering colours and basic greetings. This was a very enjoyable lesson for me as I haven’t yet had the opportunity to teach a language within school, and has encouraged me to study Spanish further in order to be able to teach it further when I return home. Following this week, we are rewarded with a long weekend and we intend to travel along the east coast towards Durban (known as Transkei), which I believe is a much more rural area than that of the West Coast.

Hope everyone is well at home

Lynsey