Building a School in the Bush

1/31/13
My classroom is small. Just enough room to make my sweaty rounds behind the square of desks, checking on who's writing numbers correctly, saving massive glitter-glue spills, preventing small-but-significant violence. A motley collection of educational posters speckle the walls, sticky-tacky sometimes coming loose in the midday heat. The stained concrete floor is hard beneath my heels, but at least it cleans up easily. Teaching primary school is a nonstop, on-your-feet kind of job; exhausting, exhilarating, and more worthy of mad respect than I ever knew.

The kids span the spectrum. Three speak only Tsutu. Some can subtract. Some don't know numbers yet. Some are capable of telling complex stories. Some can barely point at pictures of letters. All day long I shift gears wildly between babysitter, preschool, kindergarten, and first grade. Four-in-the-floor, and someone else is pumping the clutch. I struggle to find balance in the classroom, to challenge the advanced and develop the slow.

And yet they all play with equal impressive vigor, parading around the playground with a zeal that spans color and language, age and gender. Recess remains my favorite, a time when I can breathe and stand (mostly) still and reflect. Heidi pushes the others around and around on a plastic wheelie, making sure everyone takes turns. Dimpho bounces higher on the trampoline than anyone else, giggling and screaming like an imp. Warren has learned how to climb the tree, utterly unconcerned about dirt on his white t-shirt. Mashau swings as if she were born on the wooden seat.

My experience and training with this age group are utterly lacking at best. At times through the day I find myself on the verge of violent collapse, sanity stretched thin between English, Afrikaans, and Tsutu. At times I want to scream and curse the fates that have brought me to these rocky shores. I am without compass, map, or navigator. I'm awaiting a curriculum. I have no printer. My books and puzzles are untidily stacked on a low dented table. My whiteboard perches haphazardly on a chair. The minutes can't move fast enough.

But when I look at these kids, a mix of black and white like no other school in the area, playing together with almost no notion of the still-rampant segregation in their country, I remember to take a deep breath and sigh happily. I'm on a frontier here, as all the parents keep telling me. We're breaking boundaries. It's never smooth, and it's never easy. Fogey-old ghosts are rolling in their musty graves. A sapling has been planted in Alldays, and even if my hose is weak and full of holes, the water is still finding its place.