Spiritualise

I would like to dedicate this post to all of those wonderful people who have decided to dedicate themselves to the education of children. It is such a noble station and the work of an educator can never be paralleled by any other. Teachers build the foundation of our future societies. In the field of academic education most teachers spend more time with children than their own parents do. It is amazing how a good teacher can help transform a child and it is something that I know personally. To this very day I credit so much of myself to my kindergarten and grade 2 teacher Mrs Edwards. To think that a woman who last taught me when I was 7 could have contributed so much to the person I am today is really saying something about the power of an educator.

Teachers are in no way given the credit they deserve, they should be the most respected members of our communities because they work with our most precious resource but unfortunately we have a misguided society and that credit is rarely paid.

In the Baha’i Faith we believe there are 3 types of education and the dedication to children to foster any of these 3 types of education is equal in station. These 3 are mental, physical and spiritual education. The Baha’i Faith has in place systematic means of offering spiritual education which is education directed to the development of morals, the understanding of prayer and meditation, virtues and spiritual qualities and the building of capacity within oneself. As I have spoken about it before we have the Junior Youth Group Program. This is a socio economic program which is targeted towards kids aged between 11 and 15. Its purpose is to create an open environment where these kids can find more noble goals to work towards and find a place where they can be inspired by positive examples to help them be able to stand on their own two feet during those turbulent years of adolescence. The group works through a book, each lesson is aimed at helping with reading and comprehension thus advancing literary skills as well as bringing up concepts that require elevated conversations on different themes. The first book “Breezes of Confirmation” brings up the theme of confirmation. It stimulates discussions based on the idea of knowing what you’re doing is the right thing to do. It brings up this topic in terms of deciding what you want to do with your future and what steps you have to take to get there. For example if what you want is to study at university the book challenges you to look at what you are doing to make that happen but it also creates the understanding that if you want to achieve something and it is right for you then God will help you, doors will open and opportunities arise you just have to be able to see those opportunities and take advantage of them.

So why am I bringing this up again and why the sudden desire to praise our educators? Well today, after a few weeks of strikes and deportation from the country, I went back to Kuyga school to re-establish our Junior Youth Group. For those who want to know what happened the first time refer to my post Kuyga’s Finest. The first time was just me and Sibakheh and those 44 kids and it was amazing. The Afrikaans and Xhosa kids all getting along and happy to come together to be part of one group. It was so amazing but, but, but, but... it was a fun lesson. We went there purely to introduce the Junior Youth Group to the kids. We did an art activity and we talked for a bit and played sport and took photos. It didn’t need much in terms of coordination, it doesn’t take much to get kids to draw and play sports so it was easy.

YOH YOH YOH!!!! Today, today I realised how difficult, how straining, how exhausting the work of a teacher is. Today it was me, Bayan, Ponthi, Sibakheh, Zintle and Nthabisang and 40 kids. I was like 6 of us 40 of them too easy. YOH YOH YOH!!! Wow the things you don’t think of, the effort it takes, the logistics, the coordination. Man oh man that was some seriously insane stuff, eternally rewarding and wonderfully inspiring, but seriously insane stuff.

So here I will share our experiences running a JY group with 40 kids, how it went, what we learnt and what our plan is for the future so that perhaps if anyone else has the opportunity to do something like this they can get a little understanding from here.

School has been on strike for 3+ weeks. I asked Sibakheh and Zintle, sisters who attend the school, to keep me informed of when the strike would end so that we could start our jy group again. Monday I get the call, Tuesday it’s on. My plan is to get to the school half an hour before school ends so that I can go to the grade 5 classrooms and remind the kids. Unfortunately when you have to rely on taxis for transport time is completely out of your control. So I get to the school within minutes of bell time and I’ll just tell you something funny, when they ‘ring the bell’ for the end of school they actually ring the bell. A kid is sent around the school with a thing that makes a ‘clank clank dong dong’ sound and he walks around donging and clanking to signify the end of school. Hilarious and slightly disappointing as the school doesn’t even have the means to ring a real bell.

So schools out, I am trying to get in touch with Sibakheh to tell her to race to the grade 5 classrooms and make sure the kids don’t go home. Her phone is busy. I see a group of kids “What grade are you in?” “Grade 5” “ok go back and tell all the grade 5 kids we have class today.” Yay for the plan. Now as I am kinda considered a ‘white person’ I tend to draw a lot of attention in the townships especially in the school. Within a few seconds I have a heard of kids surrounding me, just staring at me, waiting to see what I’ll do next. Bayan is with me and she laughs “Everyone is saying come and see the white girl.” I mean really there are white people all over this country I don’t see how I can be that big of a deal, and I’m olive not white.

So me and my heard head towards the grade 5 rooms to gather our posse and start our class. There are a lot of kids here but something’s wrong. Where are all the Afrikaans students? I assume we are going to be using the same classroom we used the week before which was an Afrikaans room. I’ve already seen the Afrikaans teacher and he says its fine to use his room, then one of the Xhosa teachers tells me we should use her room instead. I ask her where the Afrikaans students are, she says they don’t really like to participate in this sort of thing and we should use her room because people might talk if we use an Afrikaans room with all these Xhosa kids. I’m so confused, so, so confused. Last time the Afrikaans kids were fine, they were happy and excited and they all said they wanted to come back and be part of it. The whole group was happy and now instead I get this and I feel hopeless and sad because I really thought we could change that whole us and them mentality and break through the cultural barrier. I guess we need to just keep trying.

40 kids manage to squish themselves into this classroom. There are a bunch of kids here that weren’t the first time so we start with a recap and a re-introduction to the jy group. Now it is time for the girls to take over the group, me and Bayan are just here to help them out but it is supposed to be their group. I ask them to start off by working with the kids to create some rules for the group. These 4 girls stand in front of the class and silence. They don’t talk, the kids don’t talk. They look at each other, they look at me. The kids look at them, the kids look at me. Oh dear. So I push things along and eventually we have our group rules, my rule is always the best; have fun or I will give you a beating. Now we distribute the books to each kid and open up to start the first lesson. We have decided that since it’s the first lesson we will conduct it as one big group so that the kids can get a feel for how things go. Ponthi volunteers to lead this section and everything starts out smoothly. We read the story a few times different kids in the class getting a turn to read then we move on to the exercise. This section asks questions about the story and you write down the answer. Usually takes a maximum of 10min. Half an hour later and we are onto question 5. Here we notice a problem. There are some kids in the class who need things to go slowly so that they can keep up and there are kids in the class who have raced ahead and have already finished the entire activity. Everything in this book is supposed to be done as a group so we read out the questions, the kids tell us what they think the answer is and when we agree on an answer we write it down together so the fact that some kids have finished everything shows us that they are getting bored because it’s too easy for them. Now what do we do with them? Bored kids means distractions, you can’t expect them to sit there and do nothing. At first I ask a few of them to walk around and help the others with their answers or with passing around the eraser or sharpener which are both in high demand. After a few minutes I see that this isn’t working and there are more kids who have finished the activity. I decide that I will take them outside and move on with the next activity giving the other kids the time they need to complete it and with less kids inside it would be easier to manage. So we go outside and it’s working or so I think. Turns out that the kids inside now feel like they are being left behind because they want to be in the outside group and so they start rushing ahead so that they can be part of the ‘other group’.

Two groups have emerged, the inside group and the outside group. I can’t think of what else we could have done. The inside group are painfully slow at completing the first activity but soon we realise why. There are two 8 year olds sitting in the class. We have 40 kids with an age range from 8 to 17. Some kids in the room aren’t even in grade 5, they just wanted to be part of whatever it was we were doing so they decided to come too. We decide the best thing to do is to have a ‘help your neighbour’ policy so anyone that finishes a question should help anyone around them who hasn’t finished yet. This speed things up especially when we ask the outside kids to come back inside and help too. Finally it’s time to move on to the next activity but not before allowing the group to stand up and do something fun so Bayan plays a little game with us all which is actually hilarious and I can’t wait to play it with everyone in the world. Then we move on.

We spend around 15min on the next exercise, this one isn’t as tedious and I change it around to make it more fun by getting kids to draw instead of write things so it doesn’t take as much assistance either. We decide that it would be better to leave the book part of the class at that as it’s been over an hour that we’ve been sitting at desks. I read out a list of names I have of kids that came to the first class to see who’s new and who dropped out and I have a lot of fun trying to pronounce the names. We take down all the kids birthdays so we can get a better understanding of the age group we are dealing with before pulling out the soccer ball and netball which makes the kids go crazy. Everything in a jy group has purpose even sport so I ask the girls who understand netball to facilitate that and me and Bayan try to organise the soccer game. The point of sport is about unity, you work together with your team mates to achieve something.

So as the kids play me and Bayan step back and evaluate the chaos that just occurred. First of all 40 kids is way too much to achieve the purpose of each exercise and to ensure that all kids are taken care of. First things first we have to find a way to divide the group. We decide to do it by age and allocate a different animator to each age group so 10-11 in one group 12-13 in another group and 14+ in another group. I’m not sure what we’ll do with the 8 year olds just yet who are way too young to understand the content of the book. Next is ensuring that these girls can stand on their own two feet even if me and Bayan aren’t there. Now in all fairness to the girls they are new at this and it is a lot of kids. Especially for Sibakheh who is only 13 herself. So we will give them time to develop their confidence and we decided that next week me and Bayan are really going to take a backseat and let the kids see that the other girls are in charge. Another issue is food. School ends at 1pm and our class today went till 3.30pm. That’s a long time without food especially for this age group. We have to think about providing something for the kids but it has to be small otherwise they will expect too much from us and it could interfere with why you come to the class. Next is establishing a structure. We need to ensure that there’s a pattern that is followed. You come inside, we take a register of who’s here, we recap on the week before...etc Another thing that I need to do is find a way to inform the parents. We don’t want kids to misuse the jy group saying that they are attending after school and then doing something else instead, with a smaller group we would accompany them home but I think the best thing we can do is guarantee a finishing time every week so that parents expect their kids home at a certain time. Unfortunately in the townships parents aren’t really concerned with where their kids are, I mean this is the second time that I’ve run a class at the school without letting the parents know. Their kids haven’t turned up at home in over 2 hours since school ended and not one parent came to the school to inquire about their child.

So basically what we learnt from this experience is that a group this large should be divided into smaller groups when doing the activities because you can’t offer each child the attention that they need when the group is so big. Also with such a vast age group kids are going to work at different paces so we have to ensure that no one gets bored waiting for someone else to finish. Have lots of short games on hand for when the class gets restless to give them a quick break so that you can carry on with a bit more energy. It’s hard to learn everyone’s names and to identify different personalities in such a large group. This makes it much more difficult to try and remember which kids needed more help and which were self sufficient. These kinds of observations are really important for the smooth running of the group in the future so maybe take notes on the child’s appearance or take a photo which is what I’m planning on doing and be willing to make fun of yourself in order to break the ice.

Today was so hectic that although I brought my camera I didn’t get a single chance to bring it out, there was just too much going on. It was a whole lot of fun though, as always I loved every minute of it. At one point a did dust angels on the floor to try and show the kids there’s nothing wrong with sitting on the ground. They still refused and just told me it made me dirty... which it did but that’s not the point.

I’m still really excited, I can’t wait for Tuesdays. I literally have to dedicate the entire day to this group, I spend the morning preparing, the afternoon conducting and the evening resting. I can’t wait to see how this group progresses and see if by having almost an entire grade going through this program it changes the atmosphere of the school and the community.

At the end of the class I again reminded the kids to come up with a name for our group, one boy said Spiritualise. I don’t think it’ll stick but I thought that was nice.