Some High School Memories

I've recently been in touch with an old friend from high school who I haven't been in touch with for ages. The night after I chatted with her, I had the most vivid dream of being back at high school. 

It was early morning and time for Chapel - the only problem was that I didn't have my school uniform! Luckily I had my car and keys to my car on me and since I lived literally 5 minutes from school, I figured no prob, I could zip home, put on my uniform and still be back in time for Chapel. 

When I woke up that feeling of being back at school and ready for Chapel lingered with me for ages and it got me thinking to some of my high school memories, so I figured I would share some of them with you:

• 5am swimming training where we would all pitch, bleary-eyed and dive into a cool pool. Walking back up to the house after training with our slops squeeking the whole walk back.
  
• Sitting on a blanket on Front Lawn with a few friends during rest, just chilling, chatting, reading, drawing.
  
• Lining up for Chapel on cold Winter mornings when the bell went, bundled up in our tracksuits, various coloured house ties peeking through our scarves and breathing out clouds of white "mist" that would fog up my glasses.
  
• Finding my friend, Alice, who had the warmest hands and standing there with my cold hands between hers, warming them up.
  
• Walking arm-in-arm to lunch, chattering away with a friend or two, hoping that lunch would be yummy.
  
• Monday morning art practical sessions, where everyone would share what happened on their weekends - exciting stories and plans already forming for the next weekend out.
  
• Being busy from the moment you open your eyes until the moment you go to bed.
  
• Friends taking "runs" in the vlei. Which meant they were actually coming to visit me and be in a home. We would sit on the veranda, drink some tea or coffee and eat some yummy home-made treats. Sometimes, we would have an early supper and then sneak people back in time for prep.
  
• The interhouse activities: swimming, athletics, drama, music, public speaking...
  
• Sports events in the afternoons and over weekends with our busses often stopping off at the Mc Donalds for us to get some sort of treat, before heading back to school.
  
• Giggling during maths lessons - trying to understand what everyone else was talking about. It was probably one of my least favourite subjects, which is ironic considering my career choice!
  
• Debates during english that got heated but were always interesting.
  
• Learning about different cultures and lines of thought during our art history lessons and our art teacher encouraging us to always draw our weekly sketches from real life objects, not photographs, so that we would learn how to read and interpret form from 3 dimensions in to 2 dimensions.
  
• Drawing a leaf for every single first biology lesson of the year from grade 8 to matric and the big purple book that we used in grade 11 and matric.
  
• Chats with our afrikaans teachers where we discussed a lot more than afrikaans. Those dreaded afrikaans orals.
  
• Science lessons where we our teacher taught us that a good way to learn was to listen, read his notes from the blackboard and then copy them into our own notebooks so that by the time we came to learn for tests, we had read the information at least 3 times before that. And experiments.
  
• One-on-one Comp Sci lessons (I was the only girl to take the subject for matric) where I would finish off my work quickly and then spend the rest of the time chatting with my Comp Sci teacher about other interesting technology or whatever happened to be of interest that day.

My friend, Alice, and I at some fun school event :)

Old Girls Drinks and Nostalgia

A little while ago I went to an old girls drinks in Joburg and it was the first time since leaving school that I've been in a room packed to the brim with females since I left high school. I've been out of high school for a longer (only by a year) period of time than I was in high school. 

Wow. I had forgotten what it's like to be in an estrogen storm. High pitched squeals and chatting at speeds that would put an F1 driver to shame. I remember that guy friends from our brother schools would stare in confused bewilderment as girls from school chatted so quickly that after 5 minutes they had no idea what we were actually talking about. This time, the only man there was the current headmaster and I hope, for his sake, that he has mastered the technique of speed listening.

There were about 15 or so of the girls from my year there and it was awesome to see what everyone had achieved. Some were working, some were still studying. Some were working while studying. Girls have matured and life has happened, but underneath the more "grown up" exteriors, I could still see glimpses of the girls I went to high school with.

It made me nostalgic. For sprawling on a blanket on front lawn during rest. For afternoon sessions - swimming, hockey, judo, golf, music. My friends coming on runs through the vlei - and then bunking out popping in to my house for a cup of tea and chat on the veranda. For those winter mornings before Chapel, standing outside bundled in a scarf and padded jacket, breathing out white clouds and warming each others hands. 

Typical swimming events - cold and miserable

Hockey Team and coach

Chapel

Monday morning art sessions where, if you listened, you heard all the gossip from the previous weekend. For our start of the year "all-girls" social where 2nd formers were introduced to the school spirit and general craziness. For DMCs and sharing dreams for the future. For end of year Christmas lunch then jumping-into-the-pool-with-blue-dresses-going-mud-sliding. For keeping busy from dawn until dusk. 

Playing dress up on the last day of school

For spending all day with friends. Dressing up for any and all occasions. For house mothers. For awesome teachers who dealt with all the girly-hysteria on a daily basis and carried us though our studies. Prep sessions where old Mrs B could be heard admonishing late-comers throughout the classroom block. And later in the evening, you would hear her heels, click-clacking through the corridors making sure work was being done. Weekend adventures and Friday night SCA sessions in the green shack. 

SCA in the Green Shack

Giggling over boys and peoples latest crushes. Learning to dance for Chanel Ball. The beauty and radiance of matric ball - front lawn covered with girls in white dresses and proud parents taking pictures. 

Matric Ball

Girls and partners at pre-drinks at my house

Waitressing at older forms dances - and getting to eat any delicious left-overs. Tea-time snacks. The privilege of being able to go to "The Ville" on free afternoons during the week- and then meeting up with the guys who were there for extra Maths lessons. For the excitement of the big school-boy rugby matches where you went to watch rugby see and be seen. Participating in and observing interhouse events - drama, music, sport, art, public speaking. Interschools newspaper quiz with a winning team combination. For the feeling of possibility and for knowing no limits.

Interhouse music competition

Tea at the Ville

Some sort of fun day

At one of those infamous interschools rugby matches

Chilling on the front lawn

Visitor to the art classroom

Art class antics

Sports dinner

Last day of school

5 TED Talks on Education Part 2

A few days ago I posted on the first TED talk on education. To read more about it click here.

The second TED Talk was by Geoffrey Canada on the difference between the education that rich people get vs the education that poor people get. He also talks about the "schooling business model" and how it's one of the business models that hasn't changed for years, even though year after year, it continues to display exceedingly poor results. Even though he's speaking about the schooling system in the USA, I think a lot of this can be applied in the global context as well.

Sports Dinner school event with my friend Sossy

The idea of failing business models of schools really appealed to me. At school I was one of the lucky kids: I loved to learn, I understood most concepts quite quickly and I came out the other side of the school business model rather successfully. At university things were slightly different - I battled with a lot of concepts and if it wasn't for my group of friends patiently sitting with me, explaining maths, physics and electronics concepts to me, I wouldn't have been able to pass in the amount of time that I did. I suddenly had a new understanding of why some of my high school and junior school classmates weren't all that fond of school and why learning seemed to be a burden to them. 

Some of the guys who kept me sane when stuff made no sense.
For this particular study occasion, we were all confused and lost.
(L-R: Frosty, Russell, Sam and Craig)

Dr. Canada speaks of the schooling system having a "one-size-fits-all" approach. If you're sharp enough to cotton on to the lesson quickly that's great, and if you don't get it, then that's too bad. Many schools continue to do the same thing, over and over again, even though it produces the same bad results. WHAT TYPE OF BUSINESS MODEL IS THAT?! If I had to go to my directors and tell them that I'm going to carry on doing my job the same way as usual, even though it's producing terrible results, I'm sure I would get fired on the spot!

Looking at schooling as a business model, I have to ask, how can we change the schooling system in order to better service our customers? What can we do to ensure that we encourage more kids to see learning not as a burden, but as a blessing?

In his talk, Dr. Canada mentions that there have been studies done that show that poor kids loose ground in the summer time. He mentions that test data for teachers only comes out at the end of the year, after the holidays. And who is really going to look at previous years data. Is there a way of ensuring that teachers get real time data on their kids, as they are getting taught, so that they can see where the trouble points are and try to address them? Better yet, what about giving the kids the same feedback and pointing out the sections where they may need to do a bit of extra work in order to pass that year?

I have no background in education, other than having gone through the schooling system myself. But, from what I can gather from these talks and my own experience, part of the responsibility of the failing business models of schools lies with the custodians of the schooling system. Dr. Canada mentions that at his school they have a network in place which acts like a parent figure to the kids, holding them accountable and pushing them to do better. I think we need more networks like this within our schools. However, it needs to be something that is driven by the old boys and girls of those schools, by the parents of students at the schools, by the community and not by the teachers. 

I was lucky enough to go to a school with a strong Old Girls network. Imagine if all schools had something similar, where past students of the schools mentored and inspired the present day students. Even better, imagine so called "good" schools partnering with the "not so good" schools, sharing resources and mentoring each other.

I don't have the answers to how we can better change our schooling business model, but it's sparked a thought process in me. As Dr. Canada mentions near the close of his talk - by changing and trying new things, its inevitable that some ideas and techniques will fail. But if we don't try something new, we'll never improve on our current model.

In my usual pose when studying and working - on my bed

5 TED Talks on Education Part 1

Mr Hallows and some of my class mates - Mr Hallows gave up
some of his evenings during our matric year to give us night lessons
so that we could complete our science syllabus on time.

While I was at varsity I was lucky enough to work for a company called Teach Me 2. They're a private tutoring company and offer tutors for people from university down to school level. I tutored mainly matric and Gr 11 science and maths and I really loved it.

Recently, the Teach Me 2 team posted an awesome article on facebook. It has links to 5 TED talks all centred around the theme of education and all of these talks got me thinking.

The first talk is by Rita Pierson and it focuses on how every child needs a champion. It also focuses on how the role of the champion is to encourage and build relationships with the children that they champion.

During my junior and high school career I was lucky enough to come across a few teachers who have been incredible at inspiring and encouraging their classes to learn. There was my Grade 4 teacher, Mrs Anderson, who encouraged us to listen and do maths in our head with her stories of Mrs Blobs. My Grade 6 teacher, Mr Randall, had an incredible sense of fun and we spent lots of time playing games in which we, hopefully, learnt something. I clearly remember the speech he gave us on the first day of term where he told us that he expected us to behave like adults (as much as you can in Grade 6) and that he would do his best to treat us like adults. Then there was my Grade 7 maths teacher, Mr Eburne. I can't remember why he sticks out in my head as a good teacher, other than his morning quizzes, I think it was the relationships that he built up with us as a class. 

In Grade 8 I had an awesome Maths teacher by the name of Mrs de Jager. She had incredible energy and taught us a song so that we would never forget the Pythagoras Theorem - I can still remember the tune and words! My matric art teacher, Mrs Conyngham, loved to share her knowledge of art history with us and would always give us constructive advice on our practical pieces. Mr Hallows, my matric science teacher, had an awesome sense of humour and always used to teach us a new topic by first talking about it to us, then writing it down on the board and then having us write it down for our own notes. And lastly, my matric Computer Science teacher, Mrs Ward. I ended up being the only person to take Comp Sci in my year and we had amazing one-on-one lessons that often ended up in chats, since I often finished my tasks early. To this day, I use the practical skills that Comp Sci taught me on a daily basis, while my maths and science skills help me to understand and troubleshoot physical issues in our plant.

The one thing that all of these teachers have in common is their ability to connect and build relationships with their students, which is the essence of the message that Rita Pierson is trying to get across. I have only just realised that most of my inspirational teachers taught subjects that I then went on to pursue at a university level. Along with my parents, these teachers really stand out as being the ones pushing me and my classmates to go further. They were also my champions and I feel incredibly blessed that I had so many to inspire me to push my boundaries and go further than I thought I could go. 

And now, I'm left wondering, how much of my career path was truly my own choice, how much of my career was chance and how much of it was due to the fact that I had incredible teachers in the maths and sciences?