By iobrien1093
While it seems like most study abroad students are heading back to the U.S., I still have about a month and a half left to wrap up my research and volunteer work in Cape Town. This Tuesday, I’ll be teaching my fourth pre-primary workshop at the Phumlani Village DayCare. I’ve spent the last week painstakingly perfecting this weeks lesson plan after what I would call last Tuesday’s disappointing failure. Although I had gone to the Daycare center confident in the literacy activities I had planned for the children, the day quickly turned from productive to chaotic in a matter of seconds. Hyperactivity and lack of discipline have been major problems in implementing my project in Phumlani, even more so than the language barrier. The children who are focused and excited to participate in the activities are often overshadowed by students who are unable to sit still, who yell, and who fight one another on a constant basis. The group of children I’m working with has now grown in number to about thirteen five year olds, when initially my goal was to work with 6-8. The Mamas who work at the creche are able to calm the rowdy students down for a few minutes, but soon after their backs are turned the chaos ensues. The lack of discipline is not unexpected, though, since most of the children have never been in a classroom environment or any kind of formal and structured setting before. Moreover many of the children lack parental supervision and structure at home.
I’m working with my capstone supervisor Val, who has worked in primary education for the last thirty years, to develop some classroom management tools for my program. She recommended using incentives, most likely in the form of candy, to positively reinforce good behavior and motivate the less focused children. Initially she had suggested talking firmly with them and explaining that their behavior was unacceptable, but I explained that there is a complete lack of respect for authority among a few of the children that I am working with. To many of the children that I work with I’m just “Umlungu,” meaning white person. They don't see me as a teacher, I just seem like something foreign to them. Val, was extremely upset when she heard this because she immediately identified the children's actions as one of the many consequences of Apartheid and how the past is still negatively impacting the education system in South Africa.
Val suggested that rather than try to formally teach the kids literacy, I should take more of a Learn Through Play Approach to pre-primary education. She helped me pick ten workshop topics, ranging from Colors to the Environment, that I could center my lesson plans around and encouraged me to focus more on games and crafts. This week I’m creating a lesson plan on Colors which will include activities like making patterned, colored macaroni necklaces, making rainbows with coffee filters and food dye, and making puppets relating to the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear. Val also gave me a Grade R Curriculum guide, which has really helped me understand not only what pre-primary students should be learning at this stage, but how they should be learning.
I know that when I return to GW I’ll continue to work with DC Reads as I have for the past two years, but I think when I return I’ll have a greater respect and appreciation for the teachers that I work with. Especially, the kindergarten teachers who work with ESL students. I hadn’t realized how much time and energy goes into creating lesson plans. It’s not just fun and games even when the lesson plan literally includes games. I’m never going to forget the time that I’ve spent in the Phumlnai community. Even though there were times when I felt like I could cry in frustration at myself for not being able to communicate with the kids the way I wanted to and at the kids for not listening to me the way I wanted them to, there were so many more times when I felt inspired and motivated by being around them. I can’t predict how the rest of my time in South Africa will go, but now that I’m working with Val my spirits have lifted and I feel determined to make the best pre-primary program possible for the children of Phumlani.
-Isabel