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?

The Giving Tree

 The most exciting and fulfilling part of my week is when I get to teach in the Creative and Talented Programme. We started this programme for very bright children who struggle to remain in the classroom fulltime because their attention wanders, they need more stimulation, and they need to be supported emotionally in a world they don’t gel with easily. 
 

I teach twelve- and thirteen-year-old children and currently we are dealing with social and emotional issues related to teams, being alone, loneliness and leadership.  This week’s topic was ‘are we always responsible for our actions’ and ‘what do we do when we regret our actions later ‘.

To introduce the topic, I used The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, a line drawn picture book with a powerful message. We often introduce our topics through Philosophy with Children, an education method used all over the world. The story involves a ’boy’ who loves a tree. She, the tree, loves him back and when he is young, they spend lots of time together. As he gets older, they spend less time and when he is with her, he is sad. He tells her he needs money and so she gives him her apples to sell. He comes back when he is older and needs a home for his family, so she gives him her branches. When he is older still and needs a boat, she gives him her trunk. The book ends with him sitting on her stump looking sad.

 

After discussing with my children about whether the boy was right or wrong, and did he know whether he was right or wrong, I asked the children to think back to similar situation for themselves. Had this happened to them or a family member? After some time in serious thought, I asked them to each tell a story, in third person, about a similar situation.

Third person is ideal for this type of personal story telling because it allows children to confide in others without blame because officially it ‘isn’t them’ in the story.

 

Wow did we tear up as child after child revealed a sad incident from their past, or from their family history. Most of the stories revolved around precious toys or pets who were abandoned as the child got older, but some were so poignant. Here are some of them:

 

A new nanny started to work at a family house and she was a very good worker. After tidying and cleaning the whole house, she unpacked the children’s cupboards. There were many grubby old toys slung into the back of a cupboard, and so she threw them away, knowing that the children of the house had many new shiny things to play with now. One of the toys thrown away was a dirty rag rabbit that had been loved by the daughter of the house since she was two. This rabbit had been given to her by her granny who had since died. The daughter of the house never saw that rabbit again. 

Once there was a boy who was interested in geckos, so he caught one and kept it in a box. Every day he caught insects for the gecko to eat, he chatted to eat when he returned from school, and he even taught the gecko to play with a marble. In the past year the boy found a box in his room and when he opened it, he found a pile of bones and some skin with the marble.

Years ago, there was a young woman at university who played in a girls’ band. Although the band wasn’t famous everybody loved to hear them play together and so they were offered a chance to play overseas. The young woman found out that she was pregnant with a child at that time and her dilemma was should she raise a family or go overseas with her friends in the band. That young lady now has two daughters.

 

The emotional maturity shown by these beautiful children blew me away last week. I realized again how important it is for me to teach, and how important it is for principals to teach. How else do you as a principal continue to do what drew you into the education sector originally and keeps you firing on all cylinders?

Using wheelchairs to learn about disability.....

Pinelands North Primary regularly rents wheelchairs to assist our pupils to 'walk in other peoples' shoes'! Every child has an opportunity to spend some of a day in wheelchair, trying to get around and do normal every day things without standing up. For most this is the first time they get to appreciate how disabled people manage daily. After the last opportunity, the grade 6 pupils were asked to answer some questions. These are their answers: 

My first day in a wheelchair was:

exciting, scary, fun, relaxing, lovely, different, challenging, strange, tiring, cool, difficult, frustrating, 

I found: going through the passage with lots of people, moving around outside the classroom, trying to park in a perfect position, maneuvering around, going to the toilet (lots found this challenging), getting through the classroom door, going anywhere, not being able to move my legs, pushing uphill, 

Most challenging but really enjoyed: sitting down for the day, sitting in a soft chair, riding around, watching how people treated me while in the wheelchair, rolling around the playground and passages, getting pushed around by others, experiencing how someone else feels in a wheelchair, going down ramps (lots loved this).

What I learnt from this experience was:  

that I must not take life for granted. You can live a normal life, like anyone else, while in a wheelchair. 

that it is not easy to move around and it took a lot of problem solving.

I need to be thankful for what I have and must never take it for granted.

that it is hard being in a wheelchair.

not to make fun of those around you who are in a wheelchair or are different to you.

we must appreciate our legs.

that people in a wheelchair have a hard time getting around.

I must be thankful for what God has given me.

I now know:

that people in wheelchairs are special, just like us.

how people in wheelchairs manage their daily lives.

that life is much harder for disabled people.

that different people have different struggles.

that it is easier to walk with two legs, than to ride in a wheelchair with none.

I must be thankful for what I have and must take care of myself.

I must respect others in wheelchairs.

Going forward, I will try to:

to help others and to be a good friend to those in a wheelchair.

respect people in wheelchairs, because it is very difficult doing things on your own.

to keep my legs safe.

to treat people equally.

to take care of what I have.

Ways to challenge gender stereotypes in your home

Before your precious baby is born, people have created a stereotypical picture of your child. Gender Reveal Parties, Baby Showers, gifts from the family and shopping centres identify your child as either a boy or a girl, usually with the accompanying colour range. Some families choose not to follow this stereotypical view and know that gender is actually on a continuum with many possibilities, between ‘he man’ and ‘tinker bell’, with all people falling somewhere inbetween. 

Some schools have started to be far more inclusive of gender difference and are actively challenging these stereotypes in the classrooms daily. Family homes can reinforce or break down this learning, and support for this world view definitely assists children to integrate into the world far better. Here are some tips on breaking down the gender barriers in your home:

 

Ensure your home reflects that it is okay to be different in the wider sense of the word. Actively seek out role models to interact with as a family, particularly those who are different from you. Families with parents of the same sex, families with only one parent and traditional families can assist children to understand what is ‘normal, even if it doesn’t copy their family.

Challenge stereotypes when you hear them at home amongst your family. Family get togethers are a perfect time to talk about stereotypes, with most adults still being scathing of people who are different to themselves. Enter serious discussions and include your children, even if the topic is heated. Use inclusive language too: ‘moffie’, ‘fag’ and ‘bunny’ are words that children should be told are not acceptable. Reward your children for standing up against discrimination.

 

Picture books and story books are good ways to introduce difference in gender into your home. Julian is a Mermaid by Jessica Love and The Girl with Two Dads by Mel Elliott are two of the books Pinelands North uses in their Philosophy for Children course. Both of these books challenge stereotypical lifestyles. Challenge stereotypes too by encouraging your children to play with toys that are not conventionally ‘boys’ or ‘girls’ toys: boys love dolls houses and girls love car garages too!

 

Look at the spaces in your home and ensure they don’t reinforce stereotypes. Dads calling a room the ‘mancave’ and having a pink frilly ‘princess’ bathroom for your daughter instil views that men should have caves and girls should like pink frilly things! The jobs in the house should be shared but not by gender: anyone should be able to iron, wash the car or the dishes, and water the garden.

 

And finally try to attend conferences and courses on gender differences to ensure you have the correct information. A good place to find information on this topic is through FaceBook – there are several very good sites you can join to find out the most up to date pronouns and research available. Through you, a whole generation of future adults could be far less discriminatory than the adults of today!

 

 

Top class principals are needed, now more than ever!

Reflecting on the lockdown, and on what has made some schools flourish and others languish, is the quality of the principal. I don’t mean ‘smart’ principals, or ‘wealthy school’ principals or principals with loads of experience…..I mean the best kind of principal! Cornerstones of a good principal’s leadership are genuine caring, good guidance counselling for children and staff, internationalism and a shared leadership structure.

A school that succeeds has a principal who dares to share authority and responsibility with parents, staff and pupils. This lockdown has been devastating for some families, including staff, as many have lost their jobs or businesses, and now face financial ruin. Weekly letters from the principal to families, and a daily voice-note to staff, makes a huge difference in how the individuals then face every day. When principals are society influencers and positive role models, the school community is able to follow their positive leadership. 

A good principal allows an efficient use of mental and financial resources and understands that good ideas should not be concealed but be further developed by colleagues at other schools too. The goal of the principal should be to develop the whole education system, not place obstacles in the way of ‘rival’ schools. Although schools can and should be different, collaboration between schools should mean that not every school needs to ‘push every boulder’, but rather learn from those who have already have done so. This collaboration means that schools could focus on different areas and share their findings. Principals should also build collaborative relationships with the surrounding community, so the school becomes a living part of the surrounding society.

 

Children study for themselves, not for the school, the principal, or their parents. They need to be active citizens in their own schooling. This lockdown has given children the perfect opportunity to do this. Many are now researching things they have never had the opportunity or time to do. Several PNPS children have used the opportunity to ‘Skype a Scientist’ and have learnt things that scientists research, from all parts of the world. The learning during lockdown needs to be carefully curated to provide opportunities for children to address relevant issues in the world, deal with their emotions and develop life skills for the future. Even during lockdown, we are working with those who will change our future and influence the world through their values.

 

A principal’s attitude to internationality will determine whether the school follows international trends, gets involved internationally or just survives in its community. During the lockdown there have been so many opportunities for principals to research international trends, to predict the future or to make plans. As a country we are lucky to be behind the rest of the world in this pandemic. Schools around the world have succeeded or been disasters, and all we as principals need to do is encourage pioneering teachers to try things they thought previously unacceptable in the teaching arena. Success is at the end of our fingertips!