By iobrien1093
After returning from an amazing week on Spring Break, traveling along South Africa’s Garden Route it was time to get serious about my capstone research project; to stop planning and start doing. I met with my capstone supervisor earlier this week to discuss how I wanted my final two months of service to look. I decided that going to New Chapter’s office once a week was not an efficient use of time, as there is no internet or phone connection, and that I would rather spend my service time at the Phumlani Village Day-care, working hands-on with the four and five year old children. There has been some tension and frustration recently in CIEE's partnership with New Chapter Foundation, and as a result the service learners and CIEE coordinators have decided to separate from New Chapter, while still keeping the relationship with Phumlani Village. So rather than implement a literacy program into New Chapter’s after school club I am now working with Phumlani Day-care to create a curriculum meant to prepare pre-primary school children for primary school. I was initially discouraged from working with this age group by New Chapter, with the reasoning that children in Phumlani do not typically begin learning English in school until third grade. It was suggested that I work with the fourth graders to catch them up to the appropriate reading level. I, on the other hand, felt that it would be beneficial to create the foundation for English learning at a younger age rather than to play catch up later. I could only see the benefit in helping the younger children, especially disadvantaged younger children who lack educational support, get a step ahead in learning English when they will all have to learn it eventually anyway.
I began working at the day care on Tuesday morning and it seemed that Mama Verda, the day care director, was happy to have a pair of extra hands. There are around 80 children at the day care, from ages 1-5. The five year old children were on a field trip so I began working with six four year olds on some alphabet activities. It was very hectic on that first day, because there wasn’t a separate room for me to take my group into. When any of the other children saw that I had brought crayons and paper they all wanted to be part of the activity, especially the three year olds, who do not have the maturity to sit still for a lesson. Of the six kids I was working with, only two of them were engaged in the activity, but the two did an amazing job and you could see how proud of themselves they were when they finished their worksheets. I wasn’t surprised that so few of them remained interested, as they are so young and haven’t had a structured schooling environment before. I was just excited that I could see some interest, even if it was only from a few of them. If I could get even two of the six ready for primary school, I would still consider that a success. Every child counts. The language barrier was not as much of a problem as I was told it would be, as many of the children are exposed to English out in public or on television. What I really struggled with was getting the children to stop climbing on the tables. I had to keep shouting Hlala! Hlala! which means Sit! in Xhosa. But, that was okay because now the children think I speak Xhosa fluently and they’re scared to say anything rude. It’s scary how many insults and gestures these kids, even the three year olds, use with one another.
This week was definitely trial and error.I wasn’t able to test individual knowledge of the alphabet or phonemes since the five year olds were away and they are my target group. I’ve realized that the four year old age group may even be too young, although like I said there were a few that were really trying. It’s going to be a struggle to keep the ones who want to learn engaged while there are others the same age bouncing off the tables and being disruptive. But, ultimately the point of these workshops is to find activities that can keep all personality types engaged. Now that we have separated from New Chapter, I am worried about the sustainability of my project. There are volunteers coming this summer from a program called The World Race who could pick up my project and continue with it, but it’s not certain whether this will happen. The coordinators at CIEE will also pair the service-learning students coming this summer with Phumlani and suggest they continue with my project, but again that’s not certain. Since Phumlani is such an impoverished township, programs like mine are difficult to maintain. It’s more important to spend time finding food for the children than it is to spend time giving English lessons. At least my curriculum will serve as a template for a pre-primary program if volunteers choose to go in that direction.
It's been extremely frustrating these past few weeks, but hopefully now that we've changed our relationship with New Chapter and I'm getting to work hands on with the children instead of sitting in an office, I'll make some progress.
-Isabel