The year 1995 was the most frustrating in my school teaching career.
The new people in control decided to teach a two day seminar for each grade, as they should be given a lesson how all qualified teachers had to teach their class.
This meant that for two days, I had to take three classes, that I had to divide between other teachers with higher grades so that the 1st grade teachers could learn how to teach their class. This was all done a day before the teaching process began so you can just imagine what a disruption this was at the school.
After the first session the three teachers came and said it is absolutely a waste of time, because they do not know what they are doing.
The next seminar for grade 2, I sent my department head from the junior faze, to go alone to take the course for grade 2 and 3.
The day when she got back from these courses I could see that she was very irritated as she said, that there was absolutely nothing that they could teach her, as she was qualified long ago at how to do all these things that they don’t even understand.
I went to the circuit manager and told him that I will go to the grade 4 – 7 myself as the schools were disrupted by this process and that I will go to the rest of them so that the children do not loose so much time at school when their teachers are not there.
I will then have a meeting with these teachers one afternoon and tell them what to do the way I was told at the course.
On the 1st day of the grade 4 course I realised why everyone was so frustrated and upset. The course was done by 2 people one from 8 o’clock until 10 h 30. Then again from 11 h 00 till 1 pm. We received this thick big document for the day’s work. All they did was read this to us and at the end of these there were questions that had to be answered.
On my second visit I started answering the questions in the back while these people were reading the document to us. The other teachers thought that I was brilliant because at the time of the porridge and chicken I was finished and could go back to school. The daily lunch was always porridge and chicken because for some reason the other culture loved to eat it that way and this was the way it was done.
After months of the course of the new system of O.B.E I realised that in 12 years no child would be able to do maths, because they do not have to learn mathematical tables or read with knowledge or spell. The point was that kids had to discover everything for themselves and phonetic writing was acceptable so spelling was not important anymore.
I had two teachers that were teaching Afrikaans and English, who were perfectionists, and they could not handle this phonetic writing.
After 2 weeks they brought me the books of the kids, and it was just red writing everywhere because they fixed all the mistakes of spelling as these kids did not learn to spell anymore.
They were so frustrated and it was very difficult to motivate them as I actually could not resist telling them that they do not understand O.B.E and laughed at them.
We must keep in mind that these monthly meetings were still taking place on short notice for the principals. Later the staff accepted this and went along with what was expected of them. They went ahead like a "tortoise on full speed."
- To be continued –
Tomorrow will be the fun with sport.
