Mondays are always hard.
It’s hard to wake up; it’s hard to get back in the swing of work; and it’s hard to pick up where Friday ended.
Especially when it’s wicked cold.
This Monday was no different.
South Africa has officially gotten cold, and although the actual temperatures are no worse than Arkansas, our buildings have heating, these (our houses and offices) do not.
The only heating that I have is from my body and the one less-than-sufficient blanket that I own.
(I really do wish now that I had gone ahead and purchased the bigger blanket, at least then I could double it up!)
This weekend was FANTASTIC. We kicked it off with a Fourth of July celebration, which began with ribs with the SAEP crew. Ribs apparently are a Johnson family tradition. My family traditions involve the beach, hamburgers, and fireworks, but ribs will do. An exceptionally fun addition to this Fourth of July celebration were Celeste and Michael, Jane’s niece and nephew. In honor of their new American friends (go Team America!), they decided to endorse all things American for the day. Michael, all of his ten years, ordered a full rack of ribs, which he did quite well in putting down, drank enough Coke for a small army, and mastered many of Sanford’s quintessentially (Southern) American phrases. We also sang every patriotic song we could think of, including the national anthem with harmony. Considering how much I was missing my family All Day Long, it was an amazing Fourth.
Saturday was a pretty quiet day, the highlight seeing the new Dreamworks film, Kung Fu Panda. Quite Good. Skidush is the new word of the house… from Sanford. You’ll all hear it, I’m sure. Sunday was Ryan’s birthday. The dream was to climb Table Mountain, but the rain, clouds, and temperature prohibited it. Instead we settled in at one o favorite haunts, Mimi’s, and play Settlers of Catan Cities & Knights for approximately four hours. Ryan won in a sneak victory. I was only two points away, and SKIDUSH (see how it works?!), he knocked me out. Painful loss, but it was his birthday after all!
Thus my Monday morning ended a beautiful weekend and I was less than enthusiastic about waking up to the cold and heading back to the grind. (It’s not the grind… I’m really enjoying what I’m doing, but at some level, work is work.) Green Village was my crèche of choice. The principal is very shy and rarely utters a word in the forum meetings. However, I was delightfully surprised by the strength of her interview. She had quite a bit to share and, without an audience, was happy to share. She is my first college educated principal, originally trained to be a secondary teacher, but turned to working in a crèche when she couldn’t find a position. She was promoted to principal several years ago, following the departure of the original principal. This crèche is also unique because of its building. From the beginning, this crèche has had a nice space because of its location in a church building built by Korean missionaries. It has a perfectly suitable kitchen (with running hot water—the things that I will never take for granted again), an office and storage space, and a large room for the children. It still gets cold, but the room is tight, so no dripping water or breezes, and the heat that is generated from the paraffin lamps stays in the room.
Following our interview, the children were basically turned over to me. I certainly hadn’t intended this, but the teachers were enthusiastically willing to let me lead. (I don’t criticize them for this, but it did enable them to circle around the heater, while I entertained 30 children.) Following Winter School, I was thinking about teaching with a new perspective, but once I was back with the little ones, I completely reverted back to my love for them. We began by singing songs. I usually start with “Head and Shoulders” because I like it as a teaching song. Then they sang me a song, which felt like a success for me, because I’ve been trying to get children to share songs with me since I got here. I like for it to feel like an exchange, rather than my simply dropping new songs on them. Then we sang, “If You’re Happy and You Know It,” which they knew! I got one little boy to lead it while we sang along. Good Times, Good Times. Then they moved into “Kumbaya,” and we shared another moment, when they were sharing a song that I knew and could join in. They were surprised, but I learned well at good ol’ PHUMC!
Following our song and dance routine, a teacher took out a book and we proceeded to read it in English and Xhosa. I would read a page and point to pictures on the page, and then she would tell the story and words in Xhosa. Having had some ELL (English Language Learners) training in Boston, I was excited to be able to co-teach in a way that felt productive.
By this time, I had had the children for almost an hour, so I told the teacher that I didn’t want to interrupt their regular routine, and asked what was normally scheduled. She told me that there were too few Grade R children to conduct class, but that usually they would do Writing at that time. A couple of things: 1. A teacher can never have too few children—the fewer the children, the more opportunities for learning! And 2. I have no idea what Writing was supposed to be. I suggested that we do numbers. In the less than 30 seconds that I thought about this, I thought that we could run around the room counting things. The lesson, and I do feel like it was a lesson, ended up being far different.
After my suggestion, the teacher instructed the children to count to ten for me, which they did. Following this, I began holding up my fingers as numbers, only I was holding my fingers in a way that was comfortable, not necessarily what they were accustomed to seeing. I had an epiphany when I held up the number 7; five fingers on one hand and two, the second and third fingers, on the second hand. The children yelled out, “Eight!” and I realized that they were looking at the last finger on my hand, not counting what was up! So then I got them to count the individual fingers and starting making combinations of the same number with different amounts of fingers on each hand. What started as a counting activity evolved into a strong addition lesson, and I really felt like the children took something from it.
I enjoyed teaching high school last week. I really did. But there is NOTHING to the feeling that comes from first time learning from those small, smiling faces. They were having fun and we were laughing and they were proud of their successes. I tried being funny for the high schoolers, but my humor really works so much better with little ones. You can’t tickle a sixteen year-old. I had an amazing time, and the children that hung in there beginning to end (I didn’t try to keep the one and two year-olds attentive), seemed so excited when they answered correctly. If only their enthusiasm could be reached everyday and those successes built on routinely to ensure their achievement throughout school. Realistically, I know that it won’t happen tomorrow or the day after, but I do truly believe that SAEP will make a difference for these children over the long run.
Always,
Sarah
