What's Up City Mission?

Another week at City Mission Educational services has ended and it's been quite the ride. I am really loving this experience and I'm appreciating being challenged each day. This week we talked about publishing and newspapers in the grade 6 and 7 class. This post is titled "What's Up City Mission?" because that's the name of our class newspaper that we've started working on. I'll post pictures when it is completed but we had to take a break to start our mythology lessons. I'm having so much fun planning creative lessons and engaging with the students! 

When I started this internship I was shocked that everything was going so well.  I almost felt bad that things were not more challenging. I have learned that challenges come in so many different shapes and sizes and that I was too quick to judge that this was going to be easy. I'm glad that I've been corrected. CMES is definitely not organized and sometimes that can get the best of me. Just when I was in the middle of writing my schedule yesterday, I was approached by the principal to teach the grade 8 and 9 history class. He said he needed me to fill a gap and if I would take on the task. This basically meant that overnight I became an actual teacher. I am responsible for assessments, lessons, classroom management, etc. I was really happy to be treated with such high regard but I am also thinking I'm just nowhere near qualified to take on this responsibility. I will say it over and over, I am passionate about education and love working in schools but I do not want to be a teacher in the traditional sense. SO this will definitely be a new experience for me and while others are finding their footing I'm just starting over again with the third schedule I've been handed. I would be lying if I said all of this chaos didn't excite me.

The learners at City Mission are so enthusiastic but sometimes I wish they would channel that enthusiasm toward learning instead of fighting. I am constantly struggling to teach and stay positive in the classroom with so much negative energy circulating. The students are either protesting the work, fighting or refusing to listen. That is probably an exaggeration because some of the students are really fantastic. Those are the ones I don’t believe should be at CMES to begin with. I have asked some of the kids why they are at City Mission and their answers continue to shock me. CMES is the "end of the line" for almost all the student and after spending even a few months at this non traditional school, most students would not be able to go to a public school because it would be a huge adjustment. Even the most well behaved students start to become a product of the environment they have been placed in and change their behavior for the worst. What I mean by this is that some kids come to City Mission because their parents think it is a good school.  Where in reality it IS a good school for some but definitely not everyone. In many cases, siblings or family members all attend CMES and the school is really ineffective for the siblings. Since discipline is such an issue, the learners who are really bright are not learning and actually their skills  are declining because the environment is not challenging enough academically. The lessons are almost never completed because the instruction is interrupted to address a distraction or issue in the classroom. Even so this could be improved if the students had textbooks because less time would be spent copying from the board or with the teachers' backs to the class. It reminds me of the days of passing notes, the minute the teacher turned around someone would pass a note except at City Mission it's worse than passing notes. I'm hoping that in my time here I can work to implement some more engaging  lessons because the times I've seen the students perform best is when they are engaged and encouraged, not when they are copying from the board day after day.  I'm learning quickly that there is not real approach to discipline at CMES. Today I watched two students bully a smaller boy for his bus pass. One had a pair of scissors in his hand and the other a pen. The small boy was laughing and playing along until they encouraged him that soon he wouldn't be laughing. The teacher watched this scenario play out and let it get really heated before telling them to stop. Even then she didn't get up she just sat from her chair in the room. Nathan, the principal, has made it clear that he feels no obligation toward the students in terms of disciplining them and if he comes across bad behavior he is inclined to just expel them and move on. He says that he chooses to allow the students in "his" school and that they should want to be there and behave accordingly or he will throw them back on the streets without losing sleep over it. I'm still wondering how to best address the students because sometimes it seems they will only listen if you yell and other times they respond better when they are spoken to like actual human beings. I think it's a really fine line and it's a constant struggle because I know they are not bad kids but they just found themselves in multiple bad situations. For example, on Tuesday a group of grade 9 students got kicked out of class. They were walking around the school and nobody was paying attention to them. I decided to ask them why they were walking around and then I said that if they were not going to learn in the classroom they could learn with me outside. Before we started working I decided to take some time to talk to the students. I realized that although I want all the kids to respect me, I do need to earn their trust and I believe that respect and trust are mutual. We talked about everything and I learned how passionate they really are. This also reaffirmed  for me that you can make a bad impression quickly but first impressions are almost always wrong. After a while the student really started to open up and I felt like in that moment they were doing more learning than they would have done in the classroom anyway. Their assignment was to make a speech about HIV/AIDS and how to prevent it. I wanted to hear what they had to say so I started right in on the tough questions, I'm thankful I did because I learned a lot. Although we started talking about HIV/AIDS we quickly got off topic in the best way possible. One of the boys brought up a great point about the fact that we cannot control everything in our fate and he was upset that so many children are being born with HIV and there's not much being done to prevent it. He said he would be resentful if that were him and he would be ashamed even though it wasn't his fault. He transitioned into telling us about how he used to look forward to when school ended each week so he could go out and drink and do "party drugs". This 9th grade boy told me that he liked coming to school on Monday without a hangover and he made the choice to abandon his older friends who were a bad influence because he knew that he wanted to be an electrical engineer and that this was something he could control. He also said his school and finding religion really helped him to make this change. While there are a lot of flaws with this school it helps many kids too and that should not go unrecognized.  I don’t think that too many people have taken the time to seriously talk with many of the students because if they did, I hope they would see that there is so much hope and innocence in these young people. Contrary to popular belief, I am starting to believe innocence can be restored if people believe in you. We talked about making good choices and setting goals and the students lit up when I explained that you don't have to be great at everything right away but if you set your mind to a single goal each day and accomplish it then you can be proud of yourself every day and soon you'll realize how much you can really accomplish. After a while, a few other kids joined us from the class and soon each student was working together to fill in the blanks for a personal pronoun exercise or correct the sentences I had written for them. It may not have been in the standardized curriculum that the teachers are required to deliver but I was still happy to have the opportunity to make a small impact on their lives.

This week has been amazing. It has given me so much to think about between my internship and classes I feel like my mind never gets a break. It's good in that way because I am constantly learning. I am thankful for the times when I've been frustrated at the structure or the outcomes of various situations because it has stretched me and challenged me to think outside of my comfort zone. I will only be in Cape Town once in my life, as far as I know, and because of that I need to remember to put things in perspective and remember to appreciate everything which is really refreshing!