The next day after enjoying my single room and a nice shower, I met up with everyone for an early breakfast. We started with presentations from Eleni and Antonio. Then we were to go on a bike tour of Soweto and to meet and construct presentations with our groups. We took the combi out to Soweto and met our bike guides. In addition to meeting the bike guides we met the students from Marymont for the first time. I had a pretty good conversation with Allie but found the others to be quiet aloof and closed off. While they did arrive the day before at 8:30pm, and they used this as an excuse for their behavior, I found it hard to be empathetic when my last day consisted of 45 hours of travel and getting reacquainted with my fellow students. Anyway, after about an hour of waiting and talking we got to start our bike tour. We started as a large group introducing ourselves and some light dancing and singing with the guides to ‘The lion sleeps tonight’. The trip itself started with us selecting bikes and testing them out. They were all atrocious, someone’s handlebars came off, every brake was like a slow wind down toy rather than a catching motion, and while helmets were optional there was no indication that the bikes wouldn’t fall apart on a turn or fail to brake, so they became less optional. After these inspections and decisions we lined up and had a countdown to begin our trip. The first turn was right into a hill with a 45 degree incline that went on for about a third of a kilometer. Suffice it to say we were ill prepared for this, literal, steep learning curve of biking. Once everyone made it to the top and our guides stopped sharing stories about the history of Soweto and its districts we started off as a gaggle of 30 tourists on bikes. Before another stop a few of us had kids jump on our bikes with us to go along for the ride. We ended up stopping at the youth protest monument and taking a 20 minute break to hear about the past and to partake in local goods in the form of local merchants across the way. I saw a familiar soapstone bowl that I had purchased last time I was here, I use it for meditation purposes and new uses for the amazingly smooth and cold material in the form of coasters. So even though I was biking and had no other way to carry them besides the inside pockets of my jacket I made my first souvenir purchase of the trip. We also stopped at Mandela’s house and got to see traditional dancing. For the last leg of the trip, about 40 minutes, my front brake got stuck and was permanently attacking my front tire. I was able to fight and defeat this nuisance for about 20 minutes before my back started to spasm. I pulled my back out about a decade ago but have never had it spasm. I definitely stopped and waited for it to pass before moving on to walking my bike the remainder of the way to the starting point. This was where our professor had apparently been waiting for an hour for us to arrive so that we could start our work with our colleagues from South Africa. We jumped in the car and made our way over to the elementary school that we would be working at in Soweto.
1 Comment
My flight to get to South Africa started in Copenhagen, Denmark after my month long exploration of the Nordic countries. My flights combined took 22 hours with only one layover in Doha, Qatar. I went from one of the most northern parts of the world to one of the more southern parts of the world. In addition to changing hemispheres through these flights, I also was changing from being an autonomous travel that gets to take his time to a student in a foreign country that has no idea what the schedule is or how to prepare himself for the given tasks of the day. This is all punctuated by the fact that I cannot sleep on planes. So after my long journey down from the summer in the north to the winter in the south, with only an adjustment of a few degrees in temperature, I arrived in Johannesburg to realize that I had no methods of communicating with the class to find them. After a few minutes of panic led me to an hour-long passport line I lost my edge and knew I would find my class. Lo and behold I found them waiting for me right after the baggage section, and so the next phase in my journey begins.After meeting with my classmates and my teacher, and all of the ensuing hugging and stories of travel, we made our way to the guesthouse that we would be staying in. As such, around noon on the day of my arrival, about 30 hours awake, we are reminded that we are going to the Apartheid museum and meeting some of our South African colleagues. When we got in the combi and realized that our teacher Dr. Jez was driving we were all impressed and happy to have such a proficient guide for Joburg. Once at the museum we waited for our colleagues and had a chance to further catch up and talk about our experiences leading up to our program starting. Before I talk about the Apartheid museum I must preface the experience by saying that not only had I been up for a little more than 30 hours, but before leaving Copenhagen in the evening I went to four different museums. As such, I was intrigued to be able to compare differences in museum styles and content but also was a little winded by the proposition of so much new information on a topic that I have had academic contact with in the past. However, my concerns were for naught because I met a wonderful colleague of ours, Erasmus, and we ended up having a multitude of side conversations and thought exercises that somewhat detracted from the normal hum-drum of museums. We were able to interact with the museum and our thoughts fluidly and it led to a long and enjoyable experience. The major crux of our talking was focused on how language comes into play in the classroom and how we can make sure to utilize it as a tool to scaffold and help our students through strategies. For our museum experience we spent a lot of time in the life of Nelson Mandela section and talking about where Erasmus was at these times and how he viewed it. Additionally, he told me a very interesting story about an old empire in the area, its name starts with an ‘M’ but I cannot recall the name particularly, that grew and established itself as a meaningful nation before colonization. Once it was colonized and its parts separated the different regions expanded their language to incorporate different aspects of the language of the colonizers to the point where these four languages, based in Suetue, can be spoken concurrently and understood without much translating all due to this old and meaningful connection. With these lessons, conversations, and bonding complete between the two of us we moved on to more philosophical topics like America’s role in the world and what is our favorite word. We concluded our time together by sitting in front of the museum and waiting for the rest of my class and our South African colleagues to meander through the large and impressive Apartheid museum. Once we all made it out of the museum we took a group picture and parted with our colleagues to meet up with them the next day. Our combi went to the local grocery store to grab some food before settling back in at the guesthouse.I found the question concerning language and learning to be the most compelling question from this reflection. My teaching background stems from teaching English as a second language. As such, the concepts and stressors of including multiple means of access to instruction through language, manipulatives and gestures is something that I am used to as a teacher. Being informed that there are 11 official languages in South Africa worries me as an instructor but intrigues me as an architect of lessons. While their access to multiple languages might help the students to gain more understanding of material the ways that we have to deliver it or put it into a form that students can consume and retain more readily seems ever present. I am very excited to broach this topic with my colleagues in South Africa when I finally get to meet them.The most powerful question from our critical reflection #3 was the about the quotation from Dr. Walton that current inclusion in Africa is “a tame solution to a wicked problem”. Her argument is that the current practice of accommodation through new support structures does not do justice to the ethos of inclusion. While having the foundations to accommodate students needs is a start it is important as educators that we teach to the whole student and understand the sociopolitical realities that the students inhabit. I appreciated this question as it made me dig deeper into the intricacies of what it means to create an inclusive and safe environment for students to grow and learn. My hope is to one day have a classroom where students are able to express themselves and be supported academically as well as socially-emotionally.For our second reflection we discussed how the Willowbrook movie made us feel, the attributes of a disability and how African countries are implementing inclusion. I found the Willbrook movie to be intense and extremely sad as it sheds light on a really troubling time in our society. I focused on the attributes of deafness as a disability and as a cultural identity. Idiscussed how according to our book African countries are implementing inclusion by conceptualizing the social differences and power dynamics that surround the many different cultural groups that inhabit the region as a starting off point.I chose to go on this trip to explore the distinct styles and differences that come with living and teaching in another country. I feel that the best ways for me to grow as a teacher is to get out of my comfort zone and experience diverse settings and ways of doing things. I hope that my teaching style grows through my connections and experiences with the culture, local teachers and trips. I am looking forward to the opportunity to observe and learn from all of the nuances that I can gather from the local schools and their needs. I also hope to be able to impart some of the teaching ideas that I have learned into the classroom to help assist or grow the breadth of instruction of the local teachers through friendly connection and support.
|