Chapter 6 SUSPENDING JUDGEMENT AND DEVELOPING UNDERSTANDING
Chapter 6 SUSPENDING JUDGEMENT AND DEVELOPING UNDERSTANDING
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SUSPENDING JUDGEMENT AND DEVELOPING UNDERSTANDING Insights from David Wylde
In 1976 I was watching the Soweto news on TV in England with a new wife, who was English; and I said to my mother in law, that is my home, that is where we are going to live.
Three months later when I said goodbye to the staff at Manchester Grammar School, clutching a biography of Abraham Lincoln given me as a present, I expressed the hope that one day, my country South Africa, would have its own Abraham Lincoln. Little did I know. No one in the world can be more deeply blessed than those of us who have lived the last 36 years in South Africa. What have I learnt about education in South Africa, as teacher/educator, HOD, deputy, principal, rector, and especially in the last three years working in rural schools amongst the poorest? Firstly, you never stop learning. Secondly, a sense of service is the key driver whether you are serving a class of learners, a team of teachers, a school, country, God, you develop a deeper integrity the more you realise it is not about you. A calling to teach comes from a strong need to serve. Teachers who are called are those who transform the lives of others, by giving them the space to become fully themselves. It’s mainly about the others: you can’t lead if you don’t develop other people in your team; you can’t lead without a team; you develop a team by listening and being aware and by being aware you understand context which is both about geographical place, history, and culture. One example: three years ago I went to coach and mentor principals in rural no fee paying schools in villages created by apartheid dumping, full of aids and poverty and immigrants; believing naively that if I helped get the leadership right everything else would follow. After nine months one of the principals observed that, “you have
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Communities of schools also work. Where schools collaborate the learnings for each school are significant. Where one school is a model C/Independent and the other a rural school the learnings for each build our country’s empathy and alignment. Sharing and growth takes place between learners/parents/ educators. We have to breakdown our silos in South Africa to build our new nation.
I have learnt “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact it isn’t even the past” (William Faulkner).
Communities of learners in schools is also a power: peer to peer, each one teach one. We have magic stories of how matrics teach each other to succeed.
By helping each individual child to participate, have a sense of belonging, and through teaching to read and to think, we can overcome deprivation. The many individual stories of success are evidence of this.
developed me as a team leader but what about the team?” Awareness of context is important, because without it we can fall into a rut. The greatest learning I have had in the last three years was by getting out of my white ghetto/silo and understanding poverty, fear, desperation; the effect of our segregated past on damaging the psyche, rendering people wounded, which leads to apathy and self-destructive behaviour. I have learnt that we are a damaged nation with a huge sense of inferiority, and we need to address this individual by individual, community by community. Inexpensive ways of addressing inferiority for the next generation is by creating cultures of care through establishing effective rhythms into dysfunctional schools. One example is a registration period in tutor groups before the school day starts. After introducing the house system in his school another of my principals observed that, for the first time in his 14 year tenure as principal a teacher asked to go to the home of a learner. The girl had been absent for a week and a half. The teacher discovered a child headed household. The girl who was head of the household was sick. There was no food. The teachers from the school then made food. When the girl came to school she was given lunch by the teachers (this was before school meals in high schools in Mpumalanga). She felt a sense of belonging because the school cared. Lo and behold her maths results improved. We have the opportunity to build communities/teams in our schools that care, which in itself harnesses the positive power of the community in which the school finds itself. Our experience at
Penreach running community Lekgotlas and working in a pipeline of interventions, with volunteer teachers keen to upgrade their skills, from Early Childhood Development to Primary to High Schools in the same community with the Education Department, Welfare, SAPS, Health, /churches, creates a sense of belonging, pride and ownership and addresses that past culture of dependency.
Getting health and police and welfare and agriculture and churches and schools all working together in a community has great positive momentum in my experience. (The Mission Schools got this right in the 19th Century.) Equally, just as a principal needs a team, so do a team of principals need a team leader in their circuit and district. Developing teams of SMTs, SGBs, Principals, Circuits together, each with their own specific role but the same vision of service, in communities of schools in neighbourhoods that are aligned to be safe and secure is in my experience the way forward for us in South Africa.
“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crises. The great point is to bring them the real facts” Abraham Lincoln
The answer to education in this country must be comprehensive from the first thousand days of the child’s life to a safe environment in which to work and grow. Finally, lest this sound like individuals don’t matter, I have learnt that focus and vision and energy are the key factors in leadership in education. If you are not focussed on what you want to achieve and a go getter in the sense of being energetic and generating energy through positive thought and dedication, you will remain a cog in the wheel, not a hand on the tiller giving a sense of direction and pace. But your focus needs to be well located in your context, understood by your team. Anything can be achieved with resilience and a creative mind set.
David Wylde
“A calling to teach comes from a strong need to serve. Teachers who are called are those who transform the lives of others, by giving them the space to become fully themselves.”
“I have learnt that we are a damaged nation with a huge sense of inferiority, and we need to address this individual by individual, community by community.”
“By helping each individual child to participate, have a sense of belonging, and through teaching to read and to think, we can overcome deprivation. The many individual stories of success are evidence of this.“
““The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact it isn’t even the past” William Faulkner
ONE Goal: working together to achieve quality education
Connect on www.ed.org.za and share your insights
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