Today was
my last day of the first school term: an inordinately long term of 13 weeks
that has seen most of my students yawning in class – even more than usual! :o)
My first term of teaching has been enjoyable – I’ve liked interacting with
young people, and getting their inputs and hearing some of their debates. My
more senior classes, 10th and 11th grade, are
unfortunately still very small, which means that they lose out on some of these
benefits of interaction and debate with classmates. I still feel like there is
a lot for me to learn in terms of making sure that I get the balance right
between explaining things to them, and getting them to explain things for
themselves, but hopefully they at least find the subject of history interesting
and also challenging.
In my
school I have experienced several of the organisational and communication
challenges that come with a school still being in its early years of development
and still in a phase of quite rapid expansion. But I have also started to make
some good friends among my colleagues here, people with whom I hope I will stay
in touch even if we some day are no longer at the same school. It has been
great to learn from these allies about how schools operate, how to deal with
tricky situations with students (and there have been at least one or two) and
perhaps even more importantly, how to deal with tricky situations with
sometimes very demanding parents. Do me a favour – if you one day have a child
in Grade 5 (yes, I teach four classes of Grade 5 kids – 20 ten-year olds in one
room!) please accept it when I say that the Nobel Prize nominations are not
decided in Grade 5 and if your child ‘only’ gets 75% instead of 80%, it really
isn’t the most important thing in the child’s life when they are still learning
to socialise and to take responsibility for themselves…
As a
first year teacher, I don’t really get the full benefit of the longer holidays,
and I’ll probably be spending a fair part of at least 2 of my next 3 weeks of
holiday preparing materials for next term, including history exams for all of
the classes I teach. I am enjoying being able to run the courses as I choose,
but at times I feel that the downside is that I have no-one else to turn to as
a specialist history teacher, to ask for advice and guidance on everything from
assessment to teaching methods.
Outside
of school there have been some quite momentous changes in Helen’s and my life
also. Firstly, we are in the process of buying a house: the largest and most
unpredictable delay in the process is getting the necessary approval paperwork
from the local city government – third world problems! The house is in a very
central Johannesburg suburb called Atholl, which is quite close to where we currently
live. It is a 4-bedroom house with a garden and swimming pool, and we are both
delighted to have found somewhere we believe will be our home for many years to
come. We hope that we’ll be able to move in around late July or early
August, but at this stage it still isn’t particularly clear when the purchase
will be finalised.
We are
excited about being home-owners, and also a little bit daunted by the fact that
we basically only own beds and bought an outdoor table and chairs as well as
all the white goods with the house, but we don’t have much else to sit on or
eat off. So we’ll be enjoying trawling auction houses and gumtree for furniture
and housey stuff over the next few months.
Realising
that there are four bedrooms, the house would seem a bit empty with only two of
us. So we’re also delighted that on Monday this week we went for Helen’s 13
week scan and confirmed that Helen is expecting our first child, due in
October. If buying a house wasn’t enough of a challenge mixed with excitement,
we’re also both very pleased but naturally also a tiny bit nervous about all
the changes that having a child will bring to our lives. For now we’re enjoying
the fact that Helen feels well and less unsettled than in the first trimester,
and that we’re still able to be spontaneous and can sleep in at least one day a
week J But so far it has been an enjoyable
adventure, and I’m awfully proud of Mrs Butler-Wheelhouse for how well she’s
taken everything in stride. She even broke the news to me that she was very
likely pregnant, on Valentine’s Day. What a fabulous present!
More immediately,
we’re looking forward to our up-coming holidays in just over a week’s time. We’ll
be heading down to the coast for a few days at my family’s house in St Francis
Bay, and thereafter we’ve been lucky enough to get ourselves a place on the
Otter Trail - which is a four night, five day hike along some exquisitely scenic
Cape coastline. The hikes each day aren’t too long, and I’ll be making sure
that Helen doesn’t carry much stuff at all - and also that we don’t run out of
food or pure water for her to drink. Roald Dahl explains in his
autobiographical novel “Boy” how his father’s philosophy was to take his pregnant
wife on walks where she would see beautiful things - believing that this would
help inspire her to have beautiful babies. I’ve had few other outdoor
experiences as spectacular as the Otter Trail - so it can’t hurt to find out if
there’s any truth to Mr Dahl’s idea.
Meanwhile,
by some dastardly coincidence, our child will be born only when the rugby
season is over. Cue evil grin and hand-rubbing glee. The season is starting to
get into full swing now and I’ve been enjoying being back out on the fields at
schools and clubs around Joburg. I’ve had some enjoyable games already (as well
as a few more pedestrian outings) but what’s nice is that every game leaves you
feeling like there are things you could improve on and learn from, as well as
often being physically and mentally challenging at the same time. Running fast
enough and far enough to keep up with play, while also making sure that I’m in the
right position to see things, and then having to exercise judgement on whether
what I see is an issue, or something that can be overlooked for the benefit of
the flow of the game. At the same time when the action stops moving as fast, I
have to use that ‘down-time’ to communicate with and manage players in terms of
their understanding of what I’m seeing, and their attitudes to each other and
me. The best games are schools games where the younger boys are often trained
in war-cries and chants that make for a fantastically vibrant atmosphere when
reffing the more senior games. I really do enjoy my refereeing, and all things
rugby, and I hope to continue to grow and improve my skills during the coming
season.
I
recently turned 33 and marked the occasion with a get-together with family and
friends at a spot in Joburg with a lovely view of the city skyline. Luckily I
still seem to have people mistaking me for a younger age than I am, so
hopefully that leaves me full of youthful energy for all the things we’ve got
coming this year.
The response
already from the family and friends who’ve heard the news about our house and
impending new addition has been wonderfully supportive and we both feel very
blessed to have such wonderful people around us. Though I love living in South
Africa, especially under the clear blue skies and sunshine of the Highveld winter,
I do miss my good friends in so many other places, and hope that those of you
reading this from afar will get in touch if you haven’t already.
