CONTEMPLATION

Story By: Wambui Mburu

 Being an effective educator is not an easy vocation. When factors of environment and background come into play, most educators find it challenging to draw the line. Last week, during the Golang lesson plan session, we found ourselves finding it hard to draw the line. 

The topic of the lesson was to be ‘my home’. Without giving it much thought at first, all the Golang team members were busy preparing how they would teach students at Zandspruit about their home using templates of a mansion. That is a 3 bedroom house all inclusive with a separate lavished bathroom and toilet. Were it not for the team advisor Ms. Trotter, the team would not have realized that this would be an ineffective lesson plan considering that most of the pre-schoolers at the Golang Crèche did not have houses that embodied the model of a 3 bed roomed mansion. We were ignorant in that respect. We therefore changed our lesson plan to fit the environment and surrounding of most of these children.  

 

On arrival at the crèche at around 3pm on Wednesday 13^th February 2013, we began as usual, delivering the lesson to the pre-schoolers. Sylvia begun with a story based on the Bible story of how building a house upon the sand is detrimental while building a house upon rocks is the best way to build houses. During this lesson, I noticed especially one particular smart boy. He offered to sing a song in relation to Sylvia’s story.

“A foolish man built his upon the sand x 2
And the rain came tumbling down.
The rain came down and the flood went up x 4
And the house upon the sand crumbled down.
A wise man built his house upon the rock x 2
A nd the rain came tumbling down!
The rain came down and the flood went up x 4
But the house upon the rock stood firm.”

 

His articulation of every single word especially the words ‘crumbling’ and ‘tumbling’ and proper motion of his hands and legs while singing the song caught me by surprise. For a moment, I began to contemplate about the future of this boy. I wondered if he would have the opportunities to maximize his potential. These remain questions, unanswered.

 

Moving on, after the story from Sylvia and song from Telo we proceeded to the Grade two’s who we also teach. We had planned to teach them how to write, read and pronounce the alphabets. We divided the 40 grade two pupils amongst ourselves before beginning the teaching and gave out the handout sheets that contained the 26 letters of the alphabet. In my small group, I decided to call on each of them to pronounce the alphabets. Once again, here I noticed one particular loud boy, Alun. Being eight years old, his clothes were extremely sandy from playing and rolling on the floor. However, this was not a matter of concern. He struggled to pronounce the alphabets and only got the last 3 of the alphabets, X, Y and Z. he looked quite uneasy and I could see the tears welling up in his eyes. Contrary to his loudness in play, he was very shy in reading.  I called him aside and helped him read the alphabets. While doing so, I remembered the pre-school boy who had sung to well and the issue of the background and foundation of education between these two boys came into question.

At this point, I reminisced on our vision ‘to inspire children from disadvantaged backgrounds to love learning and value education through fun and engaging activities.’ Thus, in order to incorporate a fun activity, I sung a short rhythm to Alun that would help him remember the alphabet. By doing so, I could see him sparkle just a little bit. He was making progress, I was happy.

All in all, as the Golang Crèche team reflected and evaluated their lesson delivery at the end of the lesson, a common theme among all of us was the reality of how a firm foundation in the education of these children was needed in order for us to realize a maximum impact on the education of these children.  

Golang Creche Photos