The past three days the SAI team has been observing and participating in lessons at the Kalksteenfontein Primary Schools. This school runs form grade R-7. The surrounding area is depressing to drive through and from what we were told, gang and drug infested. Many of the students do not go further than 7th grade and of those who do, not even half of them will finish secondary school (high school.) The school building itself was dark, cold and worn looking.
Day one was strictly observations. My fellow special education participant and I were able to spend the day observing the basic skills teacher. We began by pushing into one of the kindergarten classes and the remainder of our time with her, groups of students came to her class for pull-out support. She said that many of the students she sees are so far behind for a multitude of reasons. She spends time reviewing reading and writing skills in Afrikaans and some English. She was a very effective teacher! You could tell the students loved being with her. She showed them encouragement, love, and a lot of individual attention; which can be missing at times in classes were there are 40 plus learners.
Day two I pushed into a 5th grade classroom along with one other participant. The plan was to teach one of the English lessons from their text books. This ended up being the most difficult and challenging day for me as a teacher. The students in the class had a limited spoken English vocabulary, and their written was significantly worse. I became frustrated with myself as a teacher that I could not reach them and the lesson was quickly becoming ineffective. At the first break, I took a deep breath and dug deep down into my skills as a teacher who is routinely making accommodations and modifications for learners at multiple levels. Once I reassessed how the lesson was going, my goals for the lesson, the students learning levels we were able to move slowly and steadily through the remainder of the afternoon. When I sat and later reflected on the lesson, I realized that the schools I had spent time in prior to Kalksteenfontein were much more advanced in their English instruction. Also, the lesson and materials the school was using were not at all interesting to the students. If I found the lessons boring, I'm SURE the students did as well! When we left the classroom informing the teacher that we would be back the next day and would like to teach our prepared lesson - the "I Am" poem.
Day three we show up and find out that our cooperating teacher was absent. The principal wanted to find another class for us to work in, however my fellow participant and I insisted on working with and following up with our same class. He seemed nervous that we would not be able to handle the class in terms of discipline. With a couple proximity checks, talk of being excluded from the fun part at the end of the day and discussions on respect; the learners were fine. There were eight two-digit by two-digit multiplication warm up problems on the board when we entered. No substitute teacher in the room with the students - which is common at many of the schools we had seen. (The students would normally push into another class or work on their own without supervision.) Many of the learners had not completed any of the task and those who had, did not have the correct answers. We taught a mini-lesson on an alternate method of computation for multiplication, then had students come to the board and explain in Afrikaans to their classmates the steps as we helped walk through each problem. This was highly successful and the learners were picking it up quickly.
The previous night, we spent a lot of time modifying the lesson to our learners specific needs. Our modifications paid off and we were able to complete the intended lesson. I wish that we could have spent more time with our students than the three days we were given. The schools are in desperate need of more staff to help reach the students. Class size severely impedes on the learning and success withing the school. During our routine bus debriefings, all SAI participants wished there was a way to hire more staff and lower class sizes to half of what they were - which would still be larger class sizes as compared to those in the U.S. Our collective mission for this cohort of SAI participants is aimed at finding a way to get more teaching and learning accomplished at the schools we visited - in particular Kalksteenfontein.We have already been discussing ideas and brainstorming ways of making this happen.
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