Rambling of a Rebellious Teacher Part 4 (original) (raw)
Miracles do happen, and by sheer grit and determination, we started the third term in the newly built Senior School. It consisted of 3 free-standing classrooms, and an Administrative block (ie. the Headmaster's office and staffroom). No Ablutions—there were plenty trees and bushes around and you could wash your hands in the dam where another trusty old windmill provided fresh water for coffee—when the wind blew.
So 80 kids (and non-kids) were squashed by sheer necessity into a classroom made for 30 with a (oh, the joy!) blackboard! The only "little problem" was that the front row of tables ended about 30 inches from the blackboard—giving me nowhere to escape when the blackboard fell down—as it did on three occasions until I personally replaced the 4 long nails on the corners supposedly holding it to the wall, with tile cement that did the trick. Luckily the walls held.
As fences are not really part of rural life in those parts, a variety of farm animals, like chickens, sheep, and the occasional donkey shared the territory with us, but we did not really mind finding the odd egg laid on one of our tables, till a goat decided to join the history class one day.
Now I know this defies imagination, but try and visualize a seriously traumatised goat leaping from table to table to evade capture by 80 extremely noisy kids (and non-kids) in a classroom built for 30. I just stood in my little corner and waited for it to end. Which eventually it did, when the poor goat made it out the door, no doubt having been put off history for the rest of its life.
And so life continued—with hardly ever a dull moment - and my pupils and I formed a bond of trust and friendship that transcended all that made us different from each other by the sheer weight of our absolute acceptance, enjoyment and celebration of those very differences.
We never did get a copy of the Matric Curriculum, I taught them Afrikaans from 1 single copy of the prescribed reading book (I pinched it from our little local town library, reported it missing and paid for it).
I managed to get hold of some old Matric history exam papers from previous classmates— this was before the Internet—computers had not appeared on the horizon—well, definitely not on ours. Photo-copiers were a distant dream.
I literally drilled them on those few exam papers—all verbally, which they copied down in their exercise books and studied. No more objections to learning the 'White Man's History'.
I typed stuff for them on my old rattletrap of a Remington, (which I donated to the headmaster when I left.) using carbon paper to generate 4 more or less readable copies at a time, which they circulated among themselves and studied.
And then the time came when my own kids were approaching school-leaving age and I knew it was time to move on. There was no future for youngsters in the little town in the middle of nowhere where we lived.
But in the end it was all worthwhile. My pupils and I achieved a 100% pass rate in my two subjects for their Matric. I have no idea where they are now and what they are doing, but I shall never ever forget my time with them—or the lessons I learned in "effective teaching".