The Boys in My Hood

"Teach cha" Jo

I had the privilege of teaching nine 4th grade boys. There are 11 languages in SA, 9 tribal languages, Afrikaans (pronounced A free kans...the language of white South Africa), and  British English. Aurora insists that all classes be taught in English because it is the language needed for work and university study. Five of my students spoke Zulu and at least two other tribal languages. Three spoke three other tribal languages each, other than Zulu, so I was working with a total of six tribal languages and using English as a 3rd or 4th language for the majority of them. Again I have a renewed respect for teachers of ESOL classes. My only comparison is the year I had an AP class of 27 with five who spoke English as a second or third language. One of my students was a 6th grader in a 4th grade class who had missed 3 years of school because no one gave him the opportunity to go.  He is too old for the 1st grade class where he should be and too far behind for the class he is in. He wants to learn but it is very difficult for him. He can repeat the alphabet but can not recognize the letters when they are pointed out. Reading is especially difficult because he can not "sound out" his words. During the second session of the first day, I saw him with his head down and realized he was crying. He was hiding his face from the other boys so they could not see his tears. I took him outside the room and talked with him about trying his best and not worrying about anything else. From that point on, I worked with him for half an hour alone before going for the other boys. He made some progress with one on one help, but his teacher will not be able to do that. She has 40 other students in her classroom. Like other kids, they are bad to "tattle" on one another and really bad to cheat off of each other's paper, so we had "character building" discussions on a regular basis. I had purchased two posters on citizenship and character building for the classrooms. They will be used by all of the teachers. Veronica encouraged each of us to pray with the children and have them pray as well. I couldn't help but remember when I could do that in America. We all agreed that we "fell in love" with our kids the very first day.  Each has his own sad story and only one has hopes for the future. He wants to be a policeman so he can have his own car! All the cars here are SMALL but fly. Speed limit is 72 MPH. They have speed bumps everywhere in hopes of slowing people down...it doesn't work. Here STOP really does mean slide tires on pavement. None of the others seemed to understand the question "What do you want to be?" These boys age 9-11 and they can see only to the end of this school term. They each want desperately to "stay in school" and return "next year" which in SA will be in January. At Aurora there is food, there is clean water for drinking and showering, there are hugs instead of hits, there are people who love and care, there are books and crayons, and games to play on the field behind the school, and there is Jesus, the one they sing about who died for them and loves them.