Jamie Brandt, 2010 Teach with Africa fellow, teaches Environmental Science and Physics at the Branson School in California.
Teaching with Ross is going very well.
We have collaborated and developed new lessons that are hopefully better for the kids, and will be used again here next year. I am bringing some of them back to the U.S. to try in my classes as well.
A win-win-win situation.
Josh Elder, 2010 Teach with Africa fellow, is a 7th and 8th grade teacher of Life Sciences at KIPP Philadelphia Charter School. Photo by Greg Lumley.
Today marks Day 4 of Living in Langa.
Each morning I wake up at 6:00 AM and get ready for the day. My host family consists of a grandmother, her two daughters, and the two granddaughters. The family is incredible. They are extremely generous and a pleasure to talk to.
It feels as if I am home with my family.
It is easy to see the family values education, with the two youngest granddaughters striving to get an exceptional education. I leave the house around 7:00 AM and walk to where the LEAP bus picks up the learners in the morning.
The bus ride is about 15-20 minutes depending on traffic in the mornings. The first class begins at 8:15. I am teaching in a Grade 9,10,11 class and observing my mentor teacher in her Grade 12 class. I have learned different classroom management styles, and experimented with different ways to teach lessons and conduct labs.
The last class finishes at 5:15 and then we go straight to the bus to take it to Langa. The ride home sometimes is longer due to traffic. I get dropped off at the same bus stop and then go home.
I cannot thank TWA enough for giving us the opportunity to be able to experience living in the township and connecting with our students on a deeper level.
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Steve Le, 2010 Teach with Africa fellow, is an English teacher and the co-director of the Service Learning program at Pacific Ridge School, in Carlsbad, CA.
Even though township kids are getting more and more opportunities to attend good secondary schools, like LEAP, where most of their tuition is subsidized, students entering ninth grade often lack English language skills necessary to prepare for the matric exam and to succeed in university.
The four years in high school simply are not enough for many township students. It is imperative that the school system reaches students at the primary and elementary levels, where kids are more likely to develop fluency in multiple languages.
To this end, programs such as Books for Africa and Equal Education seek to bring textbooks, early readers, and teaching resources to township schools.
Help us break down barriers by funding education initiatives in South Africa.
Josh Elder, 2010 Teach with Africa fellow, is a 7th and 8th grade teacher of Life Sciences at KIPP Philadelphia Charter School.
The Teach with Africa program has been incredible.
The teaching fellows that I have worked with so far are some of the most amazing, intelligent, and hard working individuals that I have had the chance to work with. In addition to living in a house together with over 15 people, it has created some great times to develop bonds with each other.
The picture above is the next incredible step in my journey.
In about an hour I will be headed to Langa. Langa is a township outside of Cape Town that a majority of the students I am teaching come from. Langa is one of the townships that was set up during the apartheid era in South Africa, and a place of residence for Black South Africans.
I will be living with a host family there for two weeks. I am extremely [humbled] at the opportunity to live in a community that has experienced so much hardship and struggle.
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Steve Le, 2010 Teach with Africa fellow, is an English teacher and the co-director of the Service Learning program at Pacific Ridge School, in Carlsbad, CA.
LEAP’s Learning Center employs immigrants from all over Africa, offering them a chance to develop their English skills and to train for job interviews. Most of these immigrants were engineers, teachers, and scientists in their home country, but without the language skills they cannot get a job in South Africa.
One of the LC’s employees, “Papa” Chris, an energetic and neatly-dressed man, manages a program called Books for Africa, which works with Rotary International and townships surrounding Cape Town to bring books into township schools.
The goal of Books for Africa and its partners is to build a library in each township school, reaching especially K-6 students to develop their English language skills.
Deb Snyder, 2010 Teach with Africa fellow, has a BS in Global Strategic Management and an MBA from Dominican University of California.
I am in South Africa to offer my skills as a Non-Profit CFO/Controller and grantwriter. I am working on grants, both researching possibilities and writing.
Yesterday was my first grant submission.
Last week, [we] discovered a funding source that would work for the tiny little Iso’Lezwe Medical Clinic. This clinic used to be located in Kalkfontein in a donated building. Since last year, the building was lost and there is now no medical facility or services of any kind in the community. Keep in mind the high rate of HIV/AIDS patients, along with an increasing number of cancer victims and small children, with no medical clinic, no doctor, nothing.
What the community does have, though, are a few Caregivers.
It was this group of young women that I was writing the grant for. In the meantime, these Caregivers will continue to work with no supplies and host the HIV/AIDS support group meetings.
The Caregivers provide in-home care services to five HIV/AIDS patients. They do this with no supplies at all. No thermometer. No BP kit. No latex gloves, no tongue depressors, nothing.
These are the three Caregivers who work here. This is who I wrote the grant for.
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Josh Elder, 2010 Teach with Africa fellow, is a 7th and 8th grade teacher of Life Sciences at KIPP Philadelphia Charter School.
Every day when I am walking to and from school, there is Table Mountain in the background. It is an amazing sight to behold.
I was able to hike up there with one of the other TWA fellows. It took us 2 hours for the hike. Being that I am a hiking amateur, I was very proud of myself.
When I first started this incredible journey I thought I would be able to blog on a daily basis. I definitely realize now how unreal that expectation was. There are some nights that after dinner I am so exhausted, but exhausted in a great way.
I love that every day I am challenging myself both in the classroom and outside of the classroom. The students that I have the privilege to teach keep me mentally sharp every day with their outstanding questions and insight into the topics we are teaching.
Help us fund an educator to teach and learn in South Africa.
Steven Lurie, brother of honored South African teacher Tracey Lurie-Sklar, speaks to some of the 5K runners.
Sunday was a special day.
Not only was it Nelson Mandela’s birthday, but also the annual Run for Teachers—a benefit 5K run in honor of Tracey Lurie-Sklar.
Tracey was a teacher who loved literature and poetry. She was an excellent athlete who’s inspired and passionate life served her English Lit students in Atlanta, Georgia, until her death in 2008 at 46 years old.
Upon her death, Tracey’s brother—Steven Lurie—began conceiving a tribute to her life. To honor the family upbringing in South Africa, and Tracey’s love for both teaching and sports, Steven devised the 5K Run for Teachers event and selected Teach with Africa as the beneficiary.
Sunday—the day the Nelson Mandela Foundation asked all citizens to donate 67 minutes to community service—was a gorgeous race day in San Francisco.
While this year’s Run for Teachers took place (with the largest field of runners yet), our current TwA fellows in South Africa were representing us across the world.
“Today we’re making a global connection,” said Executive Director Amy Schoew at the race awards ceremony. “Because of your support, we’re all a part of this worldwide movement for positive change.”
A special day, indeed.
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Katie Burke, 2010 Teach with Africa fellow, facilitates writing workshops at City College of San Francisco when she’s not teaching in South Africa.
The LEAP Learning Centre, which serves learners in LEAP’s partner communities, uses a “love clap” to applaud its students for work well done. The love clap goes: Three claps in front of the right shoulder; three claps in front of the left shoulder; and then wiggling fingers on both hands, extending out from the heart to the applause recipient, while the applauder lovingly breathes, “Looooooove.”
The love clap is warm and silly and wonderful, and every time I teach it to current LEAP students, it makes me giggle.
Today, I taught my creative nonfiction workshop to LEAP students.
The students were excited to be there. For the first time all week, I taught students who had signed up for my workshop. Others had enrolled earlier in the week, but due to scheduling and attendance issues, I was never matched with those who had registered. Instead, I had taught it to students ordered to be there. Today marked a beautiful shift.
Every gift made in support of Teach with Africa helps send an educator like Katie to South Africa to both teach and learn. Join us here.
Heather Elgin, 2010 Teach with Africa fellow, works with a class here in Cape Town, South Africa. When not in South Africa, Elgin is an elementary school teacher at the Katherine Delmar Burke School in San Francisco.
Early last week I headed to the LEAPSA (graduates of LEAP Schools) leadership camp. This was a powerful experience in terms of building relationships, witnessing the formation of an organization by a most formidable group of young people, and practicing my own leadership skills.
By the middle of the second day I felt (and later shared with them) that this is a group of powerful agents of change who have the potential to support each other, change their communities, and change their country.
I couldn’t help but make a connection between the brainstorming and collegiality I was witnessing with the first chapters of Nelson Mandela’s autobiography wherein he describes the relationships, discourse, and activism he participated in as a young person.
How honored I am to have been welcomed into the LEAPSA family.
Every donation helps send another educator like Heather to both teach and learn in South Africa.