Friday, October 19, 2012

You don't want to be a school administrator!

6:55 AM | Posted by Gabrielle Wills | | Edit Post
Micah6 keeps on moving forward and my eyes are continually opened to the reality of school life in South Africa.

Today I was at two different schools for admin reasons. The first Sparks Estate Secondary - a mainstream high school. The second Westridge School - a special needs school. As I sat in the corridors of these two institutions I was amazed at the constant stream of difficulties and challenges that reach the registration office doors every five minutes. At Sparks, the teachers were phoning the police because rogue, delinquent boys were jumping over the fence, seriously disrupting classes and probably adding to the drug dealing woes the school currently faces. If I was a female teacher there I would be frightened as the young men stare at them incredulously and lie straight to the face while wondering things you don't want to know (P.S. I say young men, not boys, because I don't consider a 20 year old who is still in matric your average child). This school needs a seriously BIG Zulu impi to stare these reprobates in face and tell them the truth they need to hear. The police on various occasions have arrested trouble causing, drug dealing students but a day later they are back at school and it is VERY difficult to get rid of them. Honestly, the discipline and social issues facing schools are beyond bizarre.

I then moved on to Westridge where I watched the administration guy at reception being consistently harassed for form after form, by phonecall after phonecall and by one impaired learner after another. If I was him I would have quit long ago! By the time I left, a child was on the brink of a epileptic fit (for real) and the reception lady looked like she was about to suffer a major heart attack from stress (I am sure the wrinkles on her face and crusty looking skin were not just the result of age) while yelling at some wandering boys to "GET BACK TO CLASS, DON'T BE STUPID, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE!!" . Bright red blood vessels.

And while all of this was happening the learner at the front desk was suffering from short term memory loss (for real) and all I could do was shake my head in dismay gratefully thanking the Lord that I am not a school administrator!



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Tuesday, August 21, 2012

The library project moves forward

2:37 AM | Posted by Gabrielle Wills | | Edit Post
In the past few months, I have had quite a bit of fun with the Sheryl Pillay and Sharm Natalie in putting together a usable library at Sparks Estate Secondary School. A Grace mission day to the school in February along with a generous donation from St. Thomas Anglican Church helped spur on this little project. We started with i) scheduling a compulsory library period each week for grade 8 learners and then ii) getting the resources we needed. The kids unfortunately were sitting on tables and on the floor for the first two months of the year but it was necessary to secure users of the library before resources were spent.

As the months have progressed new books have been bought, tables, chairs and fans installed. We have even had an internet connection installed in the library with three laptops for learners to access non-fiction resources. The grade 8's have finally been able to take out books in the past 3 months as we purchased a library management software system to control the movement of books in and out of the library. Two things have emerged from this:
i) For the first time some learners are taking out a book from a library, actually reading it and coming back to class to tell others what they have read.
ii) There are illiterate grade 8's at the school who have had to secretly reveal to our volunteer librarian that they actually cannot read at all and need some help.

The library experience is therefore a dichotomous one: expanding the world of those who have the tools to read while increasing the frustrations of those who stare blankly at the reality of many books they cannot personally access.

There is one particular positive and unexpected outcome of the library project. In the course of trying to expand the current library facility, a generous move was made by the neighbouring bursar. A hole was bashed through the library dry wall into her office to extend the library by 2 metres. Our finances for this little extension were limited and the quotations we received from professional builders did not match our limitations! In response, Sham Natalie - an admin support staff at Sparks - exclaimed that he had the skills to undertake the renovation at half the price. I put him up to the challenge on the condition he submits a quotation as a sole-proprietor. Well what followed is the creation of a new start-up renovations business "ShamRok Trading"!


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Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Primary education in our local community: Exasperating!

2:01 AM | Posted by Gabrielle Wills | | Edit Post


Recently Micah6 has tried to pursue a course of action to intervene in the life of a little young girl from Cato Crest Primary School (and younger sister of one of our currently sponsored learners). Our action plan is to get her into a better school for the following reason: Four years since our first cohort of sponsored learners  entered high school, it is clear that they have been unfairly served at the foundation phase level. For these children who all schooled at Cato Crest Primary, basic groundwork never took place and their high school progression rests on very shaky foundations. As a result we have involved ourselves in the business of patch work. Maximising a child’s potential must happen at the primary school level.

Our new little candidate is entering grade 4 next year and we thought we take some action to get her accepted into a great little state school around the corner. With an initial inquest into the school's application process, we have already been turned down for two reasons i) the school is inundated with admission requests at the grade 4 level (understandably) and ii) she will not be able to cope: She has come from Cato Crest Primary where Zulu is the ‘de facto’ medium of instruction and mathematics foundations are just inadequately prepared. An absurd suggestion was then given by the admission secretary that she complete her primary education at Cato Crest Primary – the very place where she will continue to receive ‘blunt’ instruction. She will become part of yet another cohort of children we have engaged with from Cato Crest Primary whose life opportunities by the age of 13 have already been seriously comprised. In reaction we have even suggested that she be admitted at the grade 3 level but repeat a grade to address conceptual gaps. This is apparently impossible under DOE rules.

At present we are left with one remaining possibility: provide this little girl with access to extra lessons most afternoons of her school week to fill in the gaps of an inadequate education received during the day. Once we have paid for extra lessons and transport costs, this option will be considerably more expensive than R14,000 in fees for the year at the good school around the corner and just seems a ridiculous notion. The obvious long-term solution is to fix Cato Crest Primary – not impossible but very difficult and a long process! 

At this point what is clear is that despite concerted efforts and available funding, it is just very difficult to help even one life in the presence of a dysfunctional education system. The Cato Crest Primary Schools of this country are silent predators eating away at the potential of thousands of young South African lives.


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Sunday, March 4, 2012

SA and Aus unite to make a difference

10:50 PM | Posted by Gabrielle Wills | | Edit Post
Last Saturday, Micah6 was connected to a small group of music lovers in Sydney Australia. While having a good ole' blast (literally as a couple of saxophones blew into the night) in Aus, another a group of South Africans were painting classrooms at Sparks Estate Secondary School as part of a Micah6 school clean-up day. As a result of these two efforts...
  • Sparks Estate has 12 fresh painted classrooms and a school library and
  • The future of another vulnerable girl is secured by a generous "party" donation from Australia.
Thank you to those Sydney residents who attended the Mowday summer night concert and donated to Micah6. At this present moment, one of our girls in the our Micah6 programme is really struggling to keep pace in a main stream public school. She has a learning disability and unless we intervene she will literally be 'stuck' in the South African schooling system without any remedial support. For a young girl like this, who is orphaned and lives in extremely vulnerable circumstances with her unemployed grandmother (and a multitude of other siblings and cousins), there is little hope for a reasonable life trajectory. In a class of over 40 children, where there is no time for one-on-one support (let alone hope of seeing an occupational therapist), she will continually be reminded of how she is a 'failure'. Each year that she is unable to progress to the next grade, no teacher will address the cause of her problem or explain to her why she is 'different'. Her confidence is increasingly lowered in the process and any sense of purpose or ability to rise above her circumstances is snuffed out.

Recently we took this young girl to be assessed at a school that caters for children with her needs. She is currently on the waiting list to enter this school and while she is waiting we have been in a quandary trying to figure out how to get funding towards her fees of R6,000 a year. Your generous night of reveling has made her forthcoming placement at the school possible. Many thanks!


To Grace Family Church thank you for engaging with school reality in South Africa. In particular, thank you for giving up a beautiful Saturday morning, and without complaining, scrapping bubble gum off classroom walls before they could be painted! This was truly a labour of love. A special thanks to Dave Richter for organising the details of the day and important logistics as well as Bev Andrews for taking the responsibility of ensuring the curtains for the library were made.

The 25 February will certainly go down as the first day Micah6 has engaged so much support, from so many people (across continents) at one moment in time. The Lord has been faithful.
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Monday, February 6, 2012

A Grace Day Mission to Sparks Estate

12:39 AM | Posted by Gabrielle Wills | | Edit Post
I am very pleased to announce that a whole bunch of volunteers are about to descend upon Sparks Estate Secondary School on Saturday 25 February 2012 for a long overdue maintenance day! The maintenance team is meeting at 7.30am at Grace Family Church (GFC) moving onto Sparks Estate School and will be finished by 12.30pm.

GFC organises regular "missions" out into the local community where anyone can get the opportunity to make a difference where they can by just giving their time. Sparks Estate Secondary is very pleased to be a recipient of the volunteer entourage with their paint, buckets, pressure hosers and much more. The staff are so delighted at the prospect of some of their classes being painted for the first time since the school was built in the early 80s!

Planned interventions into Sparks Estate on that Saturday morning will include:
  • Painting 12 classrooms
  • Painting the school library as part of the school library project
  • Sanding down book shelves and varnishing
  • Electric Pressure hose cleaning the current school paving
  • Fixing broken door locks
For those volunteers coming to the day, bring along buckets, brooms, paint brushes, dirty clothes and electric pressure hose cleaners if you have! If friends want to get involved in adding to the list this would be great. So here are some suggestions for adding to the day:

Sick Room Project:
There is also an urgent need to revamp a very sad sick room that makes you feel more sick when you are in it than out! Here are some ways it can be improved:
Donate some cool coloured paint to repaint the sick room;
Donate a fan as the room is very very hot;
Donate a bunk bed and foam mattresses so that we can house more kids in the sick room rather than them having to ly on the floor!

Library Project:
Do you have books suitable for teenagers - both fiction and non-fiction? Bring them along to donate to the school library. If you have interesting paintings/posters that would appeal to teenagers and encourage learning we need to brighten up the walls. Or donate a TV for the "media" room.

Computer Project:
We are trying to setup a computer facility at the school because it is imperative that kids these days are computer literate. We are in need of some more machines or laptops to get this project moving forward. Also if you are IT savy we need some advice on a best solution for internet connection in both the library and computer room so that kids can access the world of online educational resources.

Other stuff:
There is so much that needs to be done at the school. The more classrooms we can paint the better. But we also need:

1) Paper realms to be donated to the school stationary room for printing of notes for students

2) White boards and white board pens to replace terrible old black boards

3) Interesting posters to brighten up dull classrooms

4) Ideas from participants as to how to improve the school in general

5) Door mats to stop dirt at the entrance of each classroom.

6) Fix broken windows in classrooms.

7) Volunteer to coach sport at Sparks Estate after school

8) Donate some fans for very hot and stuffy classrooms!

9) Contribute towards the paving of the school parking entrance so that teaching staff members do not have to start their day off with sand and mud.

10) Volunteer to teach basic computer lessons (i.e. how to navigate the basics of a computer) one afternoon a week after school or to offer sport activities one afternoon a week?

11) Donate some doors to replace broken doors in the school.

I am very excited about this and very grateful too. The school have been battling along on their own with little support for so long. To see people engaged and interested in what they do and caring for the school is truly the best gift we can give.

Directions to Sparks Estate:

The school is in 67 Baron Grove.

To get there is quite simple. If you are travelling southbound on Brickfield Road (now Felix Dlamini Rd), after what used to be called "Sparks Road" (now Moses Kotane Rd) take the second right into Kenilworth Rd.

Drive about 500m up the road taking the second left into Villa Rd. Then a quick right into Meadow Road. Baron Grove will come up very quickly on the left hand side. You can't miss the blue school on the corner. There is secure parking inside the school complex.

http://maps.google.co.za/maps?q=67+Baron+Grove&hl=en&ll=-29.839564,30.986037&spn=0.021368,0.027595&geocode=+&hnear=67+Baron+Grove,+Sparks,+Berea,+Durban+Metro,+KwaZulu-Natal+4091&t=m&z=15



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Sunday, February 5, 2012

Gcina Mhlope: setting the stage for an equipped school library

12:33 PM | Posted by Gabrielle Wills | | Edit Post

A good friend, Travis Gale as part of an AppleTree project has in recent months coordinated and facilitated really fantastic evenings called “Story Sessions”. Hosted in interesting Durban venues with even better speakers (Gareth Gale, Aaron McIlroy and Shaun Thompson), these uniquely Durban nights create the space to tell stories and for unheard stories to be shared. These story nights are not just about listening to others but have the power to inspire the wider community to live out their own unique life story. As said by the Story Session team

“we aim...to create a community of people who not only listen to the stories of others but become intentional in living out the most authentic and unique expression of their own stories. ”

On Wednesday 15th February 2012 at 6.30pm at The Stable Theatre, the Story Sessions featured speaker is Gcina Mhlope- internationally renowned story-teller, author and poet. I get the feeling that she is going to blow everyone’s socks off as she shares not just African tales but her own life story. I am truly interested in how she manages to do what she does with such talent and passion. I am also ecstatic about the opportunity this night creates to “Spark-off” of a library and reading project at a local school Sparks Estate Secondary.

The first encounter I had with Gcina’s talent was as a school girl attending a production at Clifton Preparatory for Boys. A single teen at the time, I probably should have been more interested in the young ‘okes’ on stage than some person I had never seen or heard of before telling an African tale. But I was mesmerized watching and hearing this woman. I had never seen one person almost entirely fill a hall with nothing else than inner talent. I recall an African royal projection that caught me by the collar, pulling me closer as each new word or whisper was uttered. She had an ability to almost hold the atmosphere with just a subtle body movement or blink of an eye.

These days my experience of Gcina is through her poems as our Micah6 girls prepare for their English literature exams. If you ask a student at Sparks Estate Secondary “Who is Gcina Mhlope” they will easily be able to say “She is a poet, we study her poems in class”. In a few days time; however, when I ask this question again they may be saying “Gcina is the lady who gets libraries working, who gets our library working”. This is because at next weeks Story Sessions, audience members will have the opportunity to purchase a book from an Adams store to donate to the Sparks Estate Library Project. (Thanks Travis)

Micah6 are facilitating a process of resurrecting a closed and outdated library at Sparks Estate Secondary School. Every child should have the opportunity to read and the resources to effectively engage in research for school projects. I can’t think of a better way than for Gcina Mhlope, a living story, to spark off a drive to fill our library with books and stories. It is a great opportunity to be a part of a night that both entertains and inspires its audience but also shares the power of story with marginalised kids in our community.

For more information on Story Sessions, Gcina Mhlope and the evening go to storysessions.co.za

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