Recorder Time in Africa!

Hot Cross Buns

If you know me, I love teaching recorders.  I love teaching my learners different instruments.  You can check out my classroom blog I started last February of some of the activities in my American classroom at CFIES. "Making a Joyful Noise"  So, what did I pack in my suitcase....recorders, lots of colored recorders that was purchased with Spring Fling Funds.  This is the third lesson I am sharing with my Emafini learners (7th graders) and it includes reading the notes on the staff (which was applying the information in their notebook notes) and reviewing note values.

                 The activity was fun and most of the learners were successful. There were lots of squeaks and laughs and learners playing with the right hand instead of the the left, but for most part, I would say this experience was probably the first time most of the young people ever got to play an instrument. This is my excited moment.  This is why I love to teach music! 

                  When we were leaving the school that Monday, I found my host teacher looking over the recorder book I had left with her.  She liked the quiz that was included with the book so we went over the questions and the answers.    Now in the short 40 minute lesson that I taught them to play Hot Cross Buns, I did not really get to focus on all the elements this quiz was covering.  My hopes were that she would go back over that material before administering this quiz.  We were away from school the following two days.  I returned  Friday prepared to teach the fourth class of 7th graders this lesson playing Hot Cross Buns.  While I was teaching this time, I made sure to really focus on some of the points the quiz would cover like if you squeak, what two factors should you check? I made sure they understood the left hand was on top and even reviewed time signatures and note values.  I figured this will really help them out when it came time for them to take the test.   Then my hopes of them achieving crashed and burned.  One of the learners took out the recorder quiz that she had taken the previous day.   What?   These learners were not given instructions on playing a recorder but yet they took a quiz and it was graded!   The couple student quizzes I did look at did reveal some fairly high marks. But how?   But then I realized, all the notes were still visible on the board.  Can you tell this  really bothered me?                    

                     Now, I have never really observed my host teacher lead a lesson.  I did watch them copy word for word from one of their text books into their notebooks...but that's not teaching.  So this takes me to the article that we have been assigned to read.   An International Look at Educating Young Adolescents in South Africa by Paul Webb.  I enjoyed  reading this article because it started to fill in some of the questions I was speculating about teachers and the education system that I have been observing in South Africa.  This article focused on the concern of what language the teaching and learning should be in.  In addition it makes reference to the competence of teachers teaching and knowing their content material,  How about teaching strategies?   Let me pull in one more thought that has been unsettling to me.  The majority of teachers that I observed in the township schools are older.  Where are the young teachers?  So, what sort of training did they have to help them prepare to become a teacher?  What happens in 10 years when these current teachers at Emafini are retired, do you think a new teacher from the University will be teaching in the township schools?

                    Well today when we met and had a discussion group with Paul, the author of the article, I asked some of these questions.  I did get some answers.  The teachers that are currently working at Emafini, mostly older women, graduated from the teacher colleges that now have been close down.   So I asked.  Is South Africa going to have enough teachers when so many township teachers retire?   Paul sort of smiled and said, yes, there are teachers just not in all those places. I think education is going to be very interesting in the next 10-15 years in Africa.
                        My last thought was about the language again.  From my understanding, the students are to be  taught in Xhosa up to grade 3.  But I have noticed that in more than one of the primary schools that I visited, there is evidence of English in these grades. However all their written work  that I observed is in Xhosa.  But in level 4 and higher, language is suppose to be in English.  As Paul emphasized today, unlike our Spanish immersion at CFIES where the teacher does everything in the new language, here in the schools I have observed, teachers are still giving instruction in Xhosa, but their notes are all in English and the quizzes are all in English, hence the poor results of education.  This was even observed in Grahamstown.  I believe I even mentioned that I was surprised that the lecture was given in Xhosa and when we were in the forest, he only spoke Xhosa.  Language is always going to be a battle.  Students will continue to have the difficult task  of code switching.