Article for NCAE News Bulletin, December 2008

Sometime in the next couple of weeks the December issue of the NCAE News Bulletin, a full-color newspaper, will come out with an article I wrote about my experience in South Africa. It may be edited for space, but here is the article I submitted:

Inspired By a Hero
Nelson Mandela said, “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” With a long-standing interest in South Africa and how its people were bringing apartheid to an end, I believed universal education was a key to that new democracy’s success. About three years ago I began to ask, “How can I help?” That question eventually grew into a desire to volunteer in a school in South Africa—not because I had any answers for them but because of what I could learn from them.

Turning a Dream into Reality
I knew I couldn’t just show up there so I researched volunteer agencies, checking their mission statements and programs, as well as their reputation within South Africa and in the international community. The most impressive was Cross Cultural Solutions (http://www.crossculturalsolutions.org/). Their vision “is of a world where people value cultures different from their own, are aware of global issues, and are empowered to effect positive change.” CCS operates “volunteer programs around the world in partnership with sustainable community initiatives, bringing people together to work side-by-side while sharing perspectives and fostering cultural understanding.” I’d found my volunteer organization, but volunteers pay all their own expenses; I still needed to pay for it.
Then, NCAE announced the new Linda Rader Professional Opportunity Award. I applied and was thrilled to become its first recipient. I registered with CCS, continued to read and research, got inoculations, fund-raised for part of the remainder of expenses, started a blog (http://www.ncaelindaraderinsouthafrica.blogspot.com/), and packed my bags.

An Unexpected Africa
The word Africa conjures many images, but none prepared me for the spectacular scenery of the Western Cape Province or for the stark contrasts I would encounter. The most European of African cities, Cape Town is also third-world, its stately Cape Dutch architecture in juxtaposition with the heart-breaking poverty of the shanty towns that stretch for miles on the city outskirts. The economy is both formal and informal, with vendors in outdoor markets selling traditional crafts to tourists in high-rise hotels. The past exists alongside the future, and Robben Island, the notorious political prison where Nelson Mandela served eighteen of his twenty-seven years in prison, is now a museum not far from where the 2010 World Cup stadium is under construction. Restaurants serve international cuisine, traditional African foods, local wild game and seafood, and the unique Cape Malay dishes that blend the best tastes of Europe, Africa, and southeast Asia. Table Mountain dominates the landscape, and from the city itself one can look up the slopes and see hikers or numerous species of wild antelope. Music is an integral part of all South Africa’s cultures, with street musicians everywhere. A short drive leads to resort beaches, game reserves, wine farms, some of the world’s best whale-watching, and a penguin colony. Anywhere in the hills a driver must be ready to brake for a troupe of baboons, and in the city’s Bo Kaap neighborhood, one can stand in a residential courtyard and hear the call to prayer from five different mosques. I tried not to miss any of these opportunities to experience South Africa.

A Volunteer’s Day
My day began at Homebase 2, where 20 of the 50 volunteers lived together. Volunteers came from Ireland, Britain, Canada, and the U.S., and included students, a massage therapist, a Congressional aide, attorneys, a laboratory technician, a former nurse, an actor, a business consultant, and several teachers. Living dormitory-style, volunteers of all ages bonded over breakfast cereal and late-night pizza and DVDs. Volunteer placements lasted 4 hours, followed by lunch at homebase and an afternoon of CCS perspective programming or free time. We either ate dinner at homebase or sampled local restaurant cuisine. Evenings included discussions about placement, which included schools, hospitals, hospice centers, orphanages, clinics, community centers, etc. Some worked in townships, and many in AIDS/HIV services. We needed each other to help us process all we were experiencing, and all of us found our worldviews changing in similar ways.
My placement was at Blossom Street Primary School, a government (we would say public) school serving 560 learners (we would say students) in kindergarten through seventh grade. Classes have about 50 learners. The school is located in an area called Athlone. Not technically a township, its homes are small and modest, often with outbuildings in the backyards, housing extended family. Two-thirds of the learners are coloured (mixed-race) and one-third are Africans (black). Many are being raised by grandparents. About half the learners are Muslim, the remainder either Christian or traditional African religions. The African learners come either from townships or the shanty towns while most of the coloured learners walk to school. School is taught in English, but nearly all the coloured children speak Afrikaans as their first language, while the African learners speak isiXhosa—an African click-language. I never met any South Africans who weren’t at least bilingual, and many people speak several of the 11 official languages. I began my volunteer placement assisting in a 6th grade class.

A Principal’s Dream
When the principal found out I was a trained media specialist, he asked if I would split my time between the classroom and the media center, a room piled with very dusty, outdated books, all of which were donated and most of which were discarded from other libraries. The school has no asssitants, special teachers or media specialist. A former teacher had begun organizing the books into a collection but was killed in a automobile accident five years earlier, and since then no one had time to take over. The media center also housed the school’s only television and DVD player. The principal and teachers longed for a place to bring students to read books and watch DVDs. By the time my four weeks were up three other CCS volunteers also split their time between classrooms and the media center. My last task was to develop a plan and instructions for subsequent volunteers so that this long-term project could continue. CCS South Africa’s program manager committed to keeping a volunteer working in the media center at all times so that a Blossom Street Primary media center would become a sustainable project. I hope to find schools in North Carolina that would be interested in raising money for Blossom Street Primary School to purchase new library books, DVDs and library supplies.

Conversations in the Teachers’ Lounge
The teachers at Blossom Street P.S. are as dedicated as any I have ever known. What do they talk about? The same things we do. Teachers in South Africa aren’t paid well. (The cost of living is lower there, but not low enough to justify the under $20K annual income of a 20-year-veteran teacher). Public education is underfunded. The education bureaucrats at the provincial level are out of touch with what goes on in a classroom. Too much emphasis is being put on testing, and schools are evaluated by how learners perform on standardized tests. Lots of conversation centered on a new idea there called pacing guides. Teachers wondered what they were supposed to do when some learners needed longer to master a concept and how they would handle teachable moments. More paperwork kept being added to their jobs. Sound familiar? They said that most of the new initiatives came from the U.S. and the U.K. and they asked that we in the U.S. please start coming up with some better ideas than we have in the past few years.

Changing Whose World?
Can I say that I changed the world? I was part of a continuum of volunteers that are essential to South Africa’s schools, and what I did made a positive impact. I made connections with local people such as the philosophical and wise van driver Shamiel who took me to volunteer placement and Natalie, the high school teacher who taught the volunteers Afrikaans lessons and the volunteers who will be friends for life. I still correspond with two of the Blossom Street teachers and with Shamiel. Natalie is on Facebook, as are most of the volunteers, including my roommate Pat from Canada and the four young women I came to think of as my “daughters.” There hasn’t been a day since returning home that I haven’t been in contact with at least one of them. Every one of us believes that we have been changed by our volunteer experience. And we like the changes in ourselves, even if they do make us feel a little uncomfortable at time. This experience made me realize how important it is to see my work through fresh eyes, to be truly present in the moment, to appreciate the people I connect with daily, and to continue to grow professionally and personally. I hope to bring that back to the learners in my school and to my colleagues in education in North Carolina. Finally, I hope that future winners of NCAE’s Linda Rader Award also find their own life-changing experience..