Overwhelmed

Today was the beginning of the lasts; last Monday morning assembly, last Monday walking to school, last Monday. And tomorrow it will be the same thing. While it is the lasts it is also the beginning of us heading home and taking what we learned with us into our classrooms, that is going to just as powerful.

I got to finish the pen pal letters with my students today. It was a great thing to start the week off. And luckily this time we split the class in half, which at first seemed like a good idea but group one was much better behaved than group two and I was extremely warn out. But all the letters are done and are ready for their 27 hour flight home this weekend.

There is a student in my class that I could tell was struggling from day one. Working with the class as a whole he seemed always eager to please me when he was working on his work, yet for his teacher he really does not have any drive. Today when I was working on letters he and I sat to the side and that’s when I saw that his learning is very much hindered. It was heart breaking for me to see him sit and watch until I went to him and we had some one on one time. It was a something that he does not get at all, and once I am gone he will be lucky enough if he is even noticed in class. Teachers know that he struggles but have no means to really help him while they are helping 39 others, so he gets passed through the system.

My teacher and I actually talked today and I found out a lot about the school system in South Africa. There are two phases in the primary school. The primary school goes from grade K-7, so during grades K-3 is the junior phase and then grades 4-7 is the second phase. During each phase a student is able to fail and be held back twice. Which first what I know about schools in America is that many students get held back because of the support that students can receive on a daily basis in and outside of school, that is not an option in South Africa. Once a student has failed a phase twice there is nothing the school can do to hold the student back again, so they get passed through the system and once they aren’t learning one topic well how can the build the next year? This is the issue that schools here are running into.

So back to my student that I was working with, he is one of those students that has already failed phase 1 twice so they cannot hold him back again. Once he gets to phase 2 next year he will most likely fail twice and then they will pass him though. The bigger issue with this student is that his native language is Khosa, which is not talk in Ida’s Valley or any school. His parents sent him to Ida’s Valley to learn Afrikans and English but the minute he gets home he only speaks Khosa.

Unfortunately he is one of many, and there is a hard divide on what to do when you have 40+ students to work with.