Teddy regarding his work at Christel House

In this blog entry I would like to describe my internship at Christel House South Africa which is located in Ottery, near Cape Town. Susie has already beaten me in writing a general description of Christel House which you can read here if you’d like: http://cptadventures2011.blogspot.com/2011/02/susie-learning-new-lessons-in-grade-r.html

Her internship is much different from mine, though. Susie is mostly working with the social workers and meeting with the learners to help them overcome the challenges they’re facing at home. As for me, I work mostly with the fourth grade, which is divided into the classes 4a and 4b. Specifically, I work with Mrs Marilyn of the 4b class on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. I frequently help in running portions of class, assisting with the material on multiplication, division, natural sciences, English grammar, and many other topics. I also help tutor the students during their in-class assignments and help Mrs. Marilyn prepare materials for each class. If the leerlinge (“learners” in Afrikaans) finish their work a few minutes early or have behaved especially well in class, they enjoy showing me Google maps. They love to show me places they know of in South Africa and also enjoy seeing places I’ve been to in the US. Several of the learners have expressed interest in graphic design so I occasionally show them some online graphic design forums where professional artists display their work. These learners really enjoyed seeing how their interests could be turned into real careers!

The 4^th graders are all exceptionally bright and eager to learn. As they get older they understand more deeply the gift Christel House is giving to them by offering a free education and meals during the school week. From my position in the school I do not ever really hear specific stories about the students’ family situations, but I have of course learned a lot about some of the common issues they are all facing. Many of the learners come from motherless or fatherless families or have parents addicted to drugs. Others are struggling with these situations along with many others at the same time. It is impossible to not think every day about the struggles the students are up against without my respect for them increasing. It is inspiring to see how focused they can be on their work despite all the other things that could understandably distract them. Not to mention, it's amazing to see how they just want to greet everyone with a giant hug every morning!

Despite their home-circumstances the students are usually in great moods when they’re at school. Christel House works very hard to provide a comforting, understanding, and supportive environment to create this effect. Though the teachers need to be stern in the classroom to ensure the students are learning, they all engage with the students after class by talking with them about sports or music, and help them plan fun events for holidays like Valentine’s Day. During this recent Valentine’s Day a couple periods were set aside so that each class (including 4b) could have a Mr. and Ms. Valentine’s Day celebration. A few days later I asked the marketing department if we could arrange for the 4^th graders to visit the Picton Castle, a 179 ft tall ship from Nova Scotia which was visiting Cape Town. The trip had already been planned for many other grades and the 4^thgraders were readily included. They got to learn all about long-distance sailing, hoisting sails, life on board a large ship, and all sorts of other related topics. You can check out the ship here: http://www.picton-castle.com/ship-and-crew.html

It’s these sorts of events that maintain the comfortable feeling the students have at Christel House - they are very confident that their teachers are looking out for them and want them to enjoy life, but also want them to succeed in school so that they can move up and out of the poverty they currently live in.

The school does not only focus on the students, but also on their students’ parents. They run numerous workshops to help the parents organize their lives better and improve the home-environments for the children. Thus, the school is not only a school in the conventional sense - it works to improve whole communities. It achieves this further by continually selecting students from the same collection of neighborhoods; this helps establish relationships between the families.

I could easily talk endlessly about Christel House. However, I am still learning more about it as I work with the teacher. In the next few weeks I will get to shadow and assist the marketing department and administration staff which I’m looking forward to a lot! Ultimately, I am getting a lot of experience with regards to how a school such as Christel House approaches its work.