Our Inclusive Journey is Acknowledged Worldwide!

 What an exciting but exhausting year 2022 has been so far! Early in March we were invited to enter a competition: Do you think your school is world class? Five categories were offered, and we decided to enter them all as we truly believe we are world class! That decision resulted in five people spending five full days writing why PNPS is world class in Overcoming Adversity, Innovation, Sustaining Healthy Lives, Environmental Action and in Community Collaboration. 

We received great news in May but were sworn to confidentiality until 9 June when the whole world would receive a press release, announcing that Pinelands North was one of ten finalists in Overcoming Adversity! Every finalist was asked to arrange an event in their country on 9 June so that the announcement could be made public knowledge.

Do you know how difficult it is to get well-known personalities, the entire school community, the press, social media and education department officials to an event without being able to tell them why they should attend?  Luckily, we had already invited our school community to some ‘gees’ creating events earlier in the term and so we tagged the idea to that and Youth Day, which in South Africa falls on 16 June, the following week. Overcoming Adversity fits in perfectly with Youth Day! Guests were told that they needed to be on the field between 10:00 and 12:00, wearing colours of the rainbow and to believe that the visit would be worth their while! Our families were asked to bring their children to school for only those two hours that day – and nobody complained!

Tents were erected around the field for each grade to offer the school community an activity - like face painting, flag making, games, doughnut decorating and an opportunity to create mindful bookmarks. Red carpets were laid out, food trucks offered refreshments, a shuttle service offered families to chance to ‘park and ride’ and the marimba team entertained us with foot stomping music! Photographers were quick to capture every beautiful moment! 

When guests arrived, they were ushered to the astro on the field where a social café atmosphere allowed them to meet and greet, enjoy coffee in their own ‘take home’ souvenir mug or go and enjoy the festivities in the tents.

Premier Alan Winde arrived just before 11:00 when the more formal ceremony was to commence. The choir entertained the school and then Joanne Peers, the Community Support Co-ordinator and parent, set the scene by linking the history of the struggle on Youth Day, with how our school has worked on helping the community overcome adversity over the past while.

One thousand people on the field still didn’t really know why they were there until Premier Alan Winde announced that the school was one of ten finalists in the world, and one of only two in South Africa! The crowd went wild: with South African flags waving, the entire community stood up and sang the National Anthem. What a moving moment for all present!

After the announcement, the school and the education department were allowed to share the information far and wide. Public relations experts, photographers, radio station hosts and the press, and social media influencers were all rallied to tell the story of the school as widely as possible.

The top three schools in each category were announced in June and Pinelands North made the cut! This resulted in T4 Education creating a video of our school journey and us receiving loads of media attention from the world.

The next big event was World Education Week, held online in October. This event showcased the 50 top schools around the world in a one-week extravaganza! Pinelands North was given a one-hour slot on 18 October to tell the world about what we were doing, to enable other schools around the world to follow our lead. 

The following day the winners in each category were announced: Project Shelter Wakadogo in Uganda won our category as their teachers spent 36 000 hours teaching their students in their own homes during Covid!

We are thrilled we entered the competition as it gave us an opportunity to re-evaluate what we do daily within our school community, and to appreciate the journey we have been on through the recent past. 

 

The Benefits of Schooling for a Great Future

The benefits of face-to-face schooling

During the holidays I pondered the decision of some families over the past two years to home-school their children. I thought through my perceived benefits of being within a diverse, enlightened school community. Here are my thoughts on the benefits of good schooling for all future adults!

Our social behaviour is moulded by the people around us. We learn how to watch others for non-verbal cues as well as listen to them to understand their opinion. We learn to make friends and to gently release them when the time is right. Working in groups, particularly with people you don’t like, is difficult but being at school requires us to learn how to do this. School helps us to learn how to succeed and fail, and our schooling teaches us that if we persist through failure, we still can succeed!

Some things at school are out of our control and so we need confidence to face challenges – not everything can be controlled just because we wish it were so! Schools bring together families with diverse backgrounds and this could create a ‘culture clash’. Living and learning at home amongst people you know means little opportunity to learn empathy and understanding of difference. Co-operative learning benefits everyone, especially when those participating are very different. 

If we learn good communication skills like networking, negotiation, mediation and public speaking before we leave school, we become exceptionally valuable future employees. Good writing skills and critical thinking are often part of our school assignments, with paying attention to the detail and handing the project in on time being awarded success. Another business skill we learn while at school is how to utilise resources that are available, often through recycling or reusing items, and this means that we make good decisions about how to treat resources responsibly. Decision making is another skill learnt at school: the consequences of good and bad decisions, by ourselves and others, are very evident. Ethical behaviours are also learnt through mentorship and watching the community interact positively.   

The hobbies we have as adults are often learnt at school too. Some schools like ours still include embroidery, sewing, woodwork and growing plants in their daily curriculum so children are introduced to lots of activities which can become life-long hobbies.  Good reading skills and access to great reading material usually means we become ‘hobby’ readers as adults too. Sporting activities and being active throughout life usually starts at school if this is a positive experience. 

Good schools teach us to love learning! Learning through play, through experimentation and through practice help us to continue to be life-long learners.

Nowhere in this article have I mentioned school subjects! Anyone can learn anything online these days but the skills one learns through interaction within a community are the valuable ones can take us into adulthood. Viva schooling!

Who said Covid means less learning at school?

 Pinelands North Primary School spent the last two weeks of last year celebrating their children’s achievements at individual grade award ceremonies. To better social distance every grade chose a theme, a venue and the ‘uniform’ for the day. One family member of each child was asked to join them for an hour during the day, to celebrate 2021. This meant that some grades wore fancy hats and met their parents around the swimming pool and others chose a slightly more formal occasion in full uniform and in the hall.

Besides these celebrations, the Red School children have exceeded expectations in so many other ways this year. Three Foundation Phase pupils; Benjamin Whyatt, Benjamin Draper and Jaime Barendse came first in Grade 1, second in grade 3 and third in grade 3 in South Africa in the Living Maths Competition! This mathematics ‘talent’ contest is written by hundreds of thousands of children all around South Africa annually.

Children at the Red School also learn ‘alternative’ skills: Grade 4 and 5 pupils learnt how to knit and then knitted at least one square which was added to create knee blankets for the elderly. In Woodwork, pupils created cup holders, blackboards, picture frames  and bird feeders by using their skills of sanding, cutting, polishing and varnishing. In grade 7 Technology the pupils created indoor thinking and logic games to entertain younger pupils on rainy days.

Last year, every child created art in a variety of creative spaces; from the classroom to the art room, the school hall and outside. Each child created an art portfolio filled with all the incredible art they made. We had parent volunteers assist us in the Foundation Phase, as well as teachers across the grades, adding their own creative flair to the subject. 

Despite restrictions, our Music Department participated in the Cape Town Eisteddfod and received very good results and continued making music together in a small ensemble. Some students did their Trinity exams and were rewarded with results such as high merits and diplomas. Each student even got to perform in a virtual concert, celebrating the musician in themselves!

Some Creative and Talented pupils followed a Rock Solid theme and created gardens using rocks, and others made a picture book to share with younger pupils. Grade 6 pupils spent their Life Skills lessons learning skills for life: how to change a tyre, how to identify plants and create a garden, and how to tie a tie! In Grade 2 pupils learnt baking skills, while learning about measurement: they learnt to double a recipe and make recipe cards to take home to also spoil their families. For some this year has been the year of learning how to care for animals:  grade 2, 3 and 4 pupils were trained in how to care for guinea pigs, chickens, ducks and rabbits and then daily cared for them, fed them and loved them.

The sports programme grew and diversified during Covid too. All our pupils attended compulsory sport programmes as part of the school day. This programme included a variety of activities that helped improve the mental and physical development of each child. Children could also volunteer to participate in sports’ clinics after school and on Saturdays. If anything, our pupils learnt more last year than they had previously because they had more options, more opportunities and most of all had more fun at sport. This year our pupils will again have a chance to test their sporting skills, as we work towards building a fun but competitive spirit  as we get ready to compete against other schools. 

Pupils in Red Roots demonstrated their love of inquiry and learning through play throughout the year. On 'Fun Fridays' they learnt three languages: Sign Language, isiXhosa and Afrikaans; using songs, actions and rhymes, as well as learning how to bake and make delicious treats from around the world. They learnt how to grow their own plants from vegetable offcuts and planted them in the veggie garden. A highlight again was the interaction with the animals: even those who were very nervous learnt how to interact, care for and play with Tobin, the dog, and our two tortoises, Ncothoza and Rimples. 

Covid has created opportunities to learn differently and has added a richness to our learning. Besides all these obvious learnings, most children have learnt how to be resilient, to be positive in the face of negativity and how to maintain ‘grit’. If we as adults had learnt these skills at school, wouldn’t we have had a richer and fuller life now?