July 11, 2013 Part 3

Integration

One of the themes focused on in the texts we read for TEAC833, is that there is a difference between desegregation and integration (I think this was mentioned specifically in Carter but I don't have the text here so correct me if I'm wrong!). Desegregation means that the demographics of a school might change, but students of different races interact only to the extent that is required in the classroom. Integration, on the other hand, suggests a much deeper level of interaction in which students’ social groups outside of the classroom (ex: sports, clubs, friendships), include people of different races.

 Today while I was sitting at dinner with Tandi, a student from the University of Pretoria, it made me think about this concept (albeit on a much, much smaller scale). Only two days ago, the students from the universities of UNL and Pretoria, may have been “desegregated” (in terms of university affiliation) in the sense that our two universities were no longer receiving instruction in two different classrooms.  Furthermore, we were even communicating during class time about given class topics. To the extent that the two universities represent two different cultures, this did not necessarily represent integration. After school, we all returned to our “segregated” lifestyles.

 However, once both groups of students left the confines of the physical classroom, and entered a more relevant context for our interaction, I found that more genuine, personal relationships arose. Within the context of the museums, I was able to ask much deeper questions and could gain a better understanding of the histories of several people from the University of Pretoria. This led into a 3-hour dinner, in which our communication was no longer an “expectation,” but rather something that was actively sought out.

 The question I began to ask myself was how this could be applied to the context of schooling in South Africa. What if these “forced communications” in the classroom, were given space outside of the confines of a classroom which historically was used to award/deny privilege? Perhaps students would get to know each other on a different level, when they experience the “outside” world together. Perhaps they will find a peer’s reaction to such outside stimuli intriguing, and perhaps they will come to understand each other on a much deeper, more integrative level.

-Tiffany Teichmeier

July 11, 2013 part 2

Visitor's memory as a memorial

COLLAPSE

Today, as we made our field trips to the Voortrekker Monument and Freedom Park, I found myself being reminded of the MacCannell (2011) reading multiple times throughout the day. I actually wouldn’t have minded spending less time at the Voortrekker Monument, not necessarily because it was making me angry but because Freedom Park was so well done (i.e. architecture, aesthetics, playing on all senses, sharing a story often times not heard). Something Tim pointed out to me, and I would have to agree with, is that the museum of Freedom Park had a somewhat similar resemblance to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. which also remembers the lives lost and the horrific events that occurred in the past. As MacCannell (2011) recognized, “[t]here is only one place where painful memory is maintained, considered, and preserved: in the minds and hearts and the expressions of visitors” (p. 7). It is not only important that we visit memorials such as these, but recognize the significance of being aware of these histories and sharing personal connections so that the stories of people being commemorated can live on through its visitors.

-Kristine Sudbeck

Select photos

 Group photo- with some students from Stellenbosch and University of Pretoria

 In Freedom Park

 Khoisan language on top- the entrance to Freedom Park

Dinner with UNL Alumna Leigh Anne Albert and her husband Allan Wilson

July 11, 2013

Pondering our Week 1 design

As we come toward the end of our first week in South Africa (I’m writing this on Thursday, our 4^th day of 5 participating in joint seminars with graduate students from the University of Pretoria and other southern African universities), I find myself contemplating the unorthodox design of our program.  In brief, our 16-day travel study effort has started with multiple days of participating in joint workshops with advanced African students.  This design was necessary (the reason we were invited to the University of Pretoria was to lead these week-long workshops), but I am also finding that it is authentic and serendipitous. 

Why these last two adjectives?  I write ‘authentic’ to highlight the fascinating dynamic of watching UNL students work in small groups with African peers.  With English as a common language (although it is not the first language of many of our African peers), I am watching our group form preliminary friendships; wrestle with concepts that the African students are expected to master (and shouldn’t our students do the same?); and joke, question, and suggest with each other because there is authentic work that needs to be completed.  In other words, our UNL students have a reason to interact with their African peers and vice versa.  I want our students to build their understanding of mixed methods research and language planning/language policy (the foci of our two seminars), but I think the real power of this first week experience is the interaction.

I use the adjective ‘serendipitous’ to point out how much of this first week is unscripted.  I don’t mean the content of the workshops; Carolina, Debbie, and I (in one case) and Theresa and I in the other have worked hard to create Powerpoints, stand up/sit-down activities, and the like, which give the workshops structure.  Rather, I am talking about the moment by moment interaction.  There was no advance script when three women in the workshop (two from Zimbabwe and one from Uganda) worked with me to think through research designs related to HIV patients’ responses to medical treatment and to obstacles/hazards negotiated by African students in their transition from primary schools (that allow them to live at home) to secondary schools (which are often boarding schools, because their scarcity means they are distant from most of their enrollees).   I had no idea I would have such a conversation until I was having such a conversation, but it was fun, as well as substantive and illuminating.

Although there has hardly been time for reflection, if I think about it, isn’t it amazing that me, a guy from New England who teaches in Nebraska, can go half way around the world and find people with whom I have something to share (and vice versa).  No doubt, globalization has its complications and perils, but there are upsides.

 - Ted Hamann

Reflecting on rulers

On our first afternoon at the University of Pretoria, all 14 of us were given folders by our hosts that included a pen, a notepad with the University of Pretoria logo, a brochure/short magazine that described the university, and a 15cm-long plastic ruler.  A ruler?  OK….Fast forward to Thursday and we are sitting in the mixed methods morning workshop and the task Carolina assigns (Carolina Bustamante, co-instructor extraordinaire) includes tearing apart a handout into six rectangles (like flashcards) that will be used to complete an exercise.  I watch the man and woman in front of me.  She takes out her University of Guateng plastic ruler, which is green and longer than our University of Pretoria rulers, but otherwise largely similar.  She starts to precisely tear the sheet of paper, holding the ruler along the edge of the tear line to make neat ‘cuts’ without scissors.  It’s a silly little thing to notice and it would be an overgeneralization of substantial magnitude to ‘decide’ that we were given rulers because it is common in South Africa to use their straight edge to assist tearing paper.  Still, I wonder, is this an intriguing, if unimportant, glimpse into an educational difference?  South Africa, the land of rulers as an educational technology.  Or America, the country that forgot about its rulers.

 - Ted Hamann

On translanguaging

As a second language education specialist, I teach classes that instruct future teachers on strategies used to help their multilingual students understand the English curriculum better. Negotiating the South African language planning and policy class I am co-teaching with Ted, and sitting in on the Mixed Methods seminar led by Ted, Debbie and Carolina, I have realized that I am continually witnessing translanguaging as a meaning-making process, something that I regularly advise my teacher candidates to use to help their students. As Carolina presented visually and verbally today about mixed method procedure design (entirely in English) I witnessed groups of South Africans and other African students (such as a group from Botswana) break into language groups and help each other learn the English material. It occurred to me while watching this that this small adaptation (letting the students break into groups to make sense of the material in their first language) did wonders for their comprehension of the material. In our language planning and policy class we have studied about how many South African teachers have expressed doubts about their role as facilitator (as opposed to knowledge-giver) in the classroom. Watching the combination of a lecture and small group multilingual, multimodal activities, I am impressed by the effectiveness and simplicity of this small adaptation. In our one lecture we had first language speakers of over 20 languages, and although minority language speakers were still disadvantaged, they had found a way to help each other because the teacher gave them the chance to break into groups and work together. This use of cooperative learning elevated the level of understanding. As a linguist, I continue to be amazed every day by the multilingual finesse with which students move fluidly each day from one class or activity in various languages (most are fluent in at least 4) and I am amazed that the multilingual research community has not fully embraced all that Africa has to give regarding language learning. Having participated in many international language related conferences, I have always noticed the absence of African language experts and researchers and I wonder why we have not done more to include African language speakers and researchers as I feel we have so much to learn from them.

 -Theresa Catalano

Days 2 and 3

There are couple of things that I must say I really enjoyed today. First and foremost the opportunity to work with, discuss and learn about my colleagues from South Africa.  I found the stand up/sit down activity to be extremely revealing as I was able to count 21 different first languages in the classroom.

In the last session of the day we were able to take time learn a few key phrases in Sepedi.  Though we did not have time to practice the words or learn more vocabulary, as I'm sure the professor would wanted, I really enjoyed the discussion about the culture behind the language.  I have found that some of the most important parts of learning a language is not about how to say the right words to the right person at the right time, but about the culture that is a part of that language.  I was also pleased that she thought it was important to do so as well.

-Linsay Wach

I really appreciated all of the cultural/historical background that the speaker gave to us at the end of class. I found the descriptions of the greetings, and communication in general of the tribal people to be very interesting. The information that was provided gave me a context for which the short lesson we received on language could be used in. The speaker did not just lecture at us when teaching, instead she used actions and gave stories and examples from tribes  that enhanced the learning the experience for me. 

During her presentation, the speaker showed some pictures of what a tribe or rural community in South Africa would look like and this helped me to visualize the information that was being taught. I think that this could go even further than images on a slideshow. It would be valuable to "learn by doing" and be taught the information about the tribal history while taking a tour of a township or rural community. 

-Allix Catlett

Days 1 and 2

Talking to my University of Pretoria counterparts this afternoon about the language policies at their schools, it seems as though a lot of it centered on constituent choice. A couple examples: 1) A man from Botswana said in the school he attended, English was the language of choice by most because of its positive association with economic prosperity; 2) A girl from the University of Pretoria was talking about classes at the university being offered in either English or Afrikaans and how one class she wanted to take was not offered in her preferred medium so she had to take it in the other and have students translate; 3) Another lady in my group said that at a school she used to teach at, the parents were allowed to choose the medium of instruction. They selected home-language level English even though English was not the language they spoke at home, because they wanted their children to have a rigorous English education in preparation for higher education. She indicated that there were several levels that language education was presented at, including home-language, second-language, and third-language. This was interesting to me, coming from a largely monolingual context.
-Jessica Sierk

As I collaborated today with students from the University of Pretoria, one of the things I immediately noticed was the relative ease with which they spoke about racial relationships in South Africa. An elder Afrikaner gentleman openly explained to us how his attitudes and interactions have changed over time with the end of Apartheid and the beginning of more inclusive practices. As a classroom teacher, the demographics of his students have changed dramatically, and he expressed the complications, which arose from it to our group (which also included a Nigerian woman). At first I felt uneasy about the level of honesty in his reflection before I realized that his words did not appear to bother the Nigerian woman, but rather they seemed to reaffirm the reality of Apartheid even though it was probably difficult for the man to admit.

 I found this particularly interesting because I feel that in America this type of discourse has become taboo in a way.  In America it is common to hear people say, “I’m not racist” which is often followed by a “but…” that seems to negate everything that was said before it. A professor of mine years ago, Megan Gannon, once said something that has stuck with me ever since. She explained that because of the institutionalization of racism in American culture, it would be nearly impossible for a person to not develop racist thoughts or tendencies. People can actively fight these tendencies and refuse to act on them, but because of our societal influence the process of combating racism will likely be an internal struggle until this institutionalism of racism changes. I wonder if the honesty with which the Afrikaner man spoke today (and I would venture to say perhaps other South Africans based on our larger classroom dialogue) is more conducive to affect change at a deeper level.

-Tiffany Teichmeier

The text Realising the Dream left me with an understanding of the educational system in South Africa, its post-Apartheid development, and its ostensible faults.   The text left me with a negative impression of the system and its “best” schools.  Talking with South African colleagues, however, has been enlightening, as I have realized that Soudien provided one perspective of the system.  Today, I talked with individuals about the type of schools they attended and the schools in which they enroll their children.  They described both private and (ex-) Model C schools as providing quality education.  Ontologically, I think it is important to remain cognizant that multiple realities may exist.  The same schools that scholars may consider a travesty, parents may consider their child’s best hope for education.  I realize I am mixing systemic with individual-level perspectives.  Nevertheless, it raises a dilemma for parents: whether to select a school based on academics or select the school based on social justice and its integration, which may enhance the educational experience in itself. 

-Tim Guetterman

As I spent the day today in my room due to sickness, so I did not have academic input today from class, I decided to write about something more informal in this opportunity, but still signifficant, that I have experienced here. 

Sometimes we take for granted what we have, the food that we eat, or the commodities we can afford in a country like the United States. Last night when we came back from campus I talked to my dad in Colombia on Skype. I was telling him about how wonderful it was to meet all the students from different countries in Africa and the interactions we had in class with them. My dad asked me if I had tried any typical African dishes yet, so I told him about our lunch experience with the small cup of soup yesterday. When I finished the line, there was no bread or bananas left. Some of my UNL classmates and I were commenting on how small the lunch was. I told my dad that this would never happen in a US campus, on the contrary, it seems that there is always too much food and a lot of it is, unfortunately, wasted. This lack of abundance would not be a surprise in many places in Colombia either, but rather the norm. Most people would be very thankful for a free cup of soup. So, my point is that I hope that this trip, besides the academic and cultural experiences we are gaining, helps us open our eyes to a reality that a lot people in a lot of places (definitely more than we could think of) live on a daily basis, and makes us more appreciative of what we have, and hopefully think of ways of contributing to social justice.

-Carolina Bustamante

Visit to the Pretoria zoo.