19 posts tagged “education”

Last week Friday I had an interview for a job teaching Design Technology at a “technology college” in England. It lasted for an hour and a half. The agency who arranged the interview said it was much longer than normal and predicted a favourable outcome. On Monday I was offered the post - which I accepted.

When I told Nancy about it she laughed and asked me how I am going to manage it. “You might as well have accepted a job teaching Maths or Science”. I was quite upset by her response to be honest. I had been expecting her to say, “Well done you!”, and gush a bit. Still, Nancy knows me better than anyone and I wonder if she is right about me biting of more than I can chew with this job.

It is an all-boys school of nearly a thousand students, each one of them taking Design technology. This year I found the 20-odd students I had for art class enough, so how I will manage with 50 times that amount is something I cannot even imagine yet. I will have to deal with it when I am there.

So why did I accept the post? Well to begin with I don’t mind the challenge (albeit it a masochistic one). I will be learning new skills, like how to handle a variety of machines well enough to instruct others how to do so and how to use different CAD programs. I’ll also gain the confidence I currently lack to present myself to a large group of young people and maintain my ground. I’ll learn to be more organised and more efficient.

From a career point of view, Design technology is a good subject to be able to teach because it is a core subject in the UK with many available posts. So once I am okay with teaching it I will be able to cast a far wider net than I can with only Art and Design when looking for a job. In fact, it will probably stand me in good stead when looking for posts in international schools as well. Teaching in international schools is an excellent way to earn good money as a teacher, see the world and experience different cultures, and it is something I would like to do in the future once I have a solid base in the England. Accepting this post is a tactical step towards that goal.

Nonetheless, I am aware that the job might get the better of me after all. Despite all that I stand to gain the fact remains that I prefer teaching Art and Design, I prefer small classes and I prefer teaching girls. But if it really does turn out terribly I will simply leave it at the end of the semester in June when my probation period ends. Even so I will have gained valuable experience and by then I would have found my feet in England, saved some money and be in a better position to go after jobs without the need of an agency.

Time will tell how things turn out.  

Lately I have been doing little else besides compiling all the work I have done this year into portfolios and studying for my exams, which started today.

Although the first one went well enough, I couldn’t help feeling put out because of it. I just feel too old to still be writing tests.  I don’t mind the idea of studying. That I like. So much so I want to keep on at for the next few years if I can. It’s just the idea of writing tests that gets to me: Having to memorise stuff at home and then sit in a room for three hours and spew it all out again. There’s no point to it anymore.

On Friday I wrote an Afrikaans test to get an endorsement for a second language. Apparently state schools in South Africa require proficiency in at least two of the eleven official languages before they can offer teachers a permanent post. Since I’ll be working at a state school next year I had no choice but do take the test. It wasn’t too bad though. All it entailed was a written comprehension, a piece of writing and a 20-minute oral test afterwards. It was actually quite fun. I was curious to know where my Afrikaans stood anyway because I haven’t spoken more than a few words of it in absolute years. In South Africa Afrikaans people speak Afrikaans to each other and English to pretty much everyone else. The same was true in Taiwan. Although the majority of South Africans there were Afrikaners they always spoke to me in English. Nevertheless, I was glad to discover my Afrikaans is still in working order despite the layer of dust that covers it.

In two short weeks from now my course will be over and I’ll get the certificate that I wanted out of it. It will certainly make me more employable than I was this time a year ago, which is a comfort. To me a teaching qualification is a kind of insurance policy. It guarantees me job in many countries and I feel far more confident to take certain career risks now (like becoming a professional artist) with the sense of security that comes from being able to get a teaching job if it doesn’t work out. Besides, I do like teaching. I could do it as a career quite happily too. It’s just that it's not my dream job… more like my bread and butter job that’s not too bad.

The other day I went into the school where I’ll be working next year and got talking to the sculpture teacher. He is a little older than me and was saying how difficult it was for him to get a job a few years ago. He said that for a long time after the 1994 democratic elections that saw in the new government, white males were the very last choice amongst job applicants, especially for state positions. His CV was constantly overlooked and as an artist he struggled to find a gallery that would even look at his portfolio before they rejected him.

I remember reading and hearing about affirmative action and black empowerment when I was abroad but it never affected me directly. Since I have been back in South Africa the issue has come up a few times, but it was only over the weekend that really struck a chord. I was filling out a hefty application form for the position of a House Warden at one of the student residences at Rhodes University when I came to section that asked to specify if I was Black, Coloured or Asian. Underneath it explained that this information was necessary for equity purposes, but to me it read that the job was not open to whites. I felt incredibly discouraged and reluctant to even complete the form. When I handed it in today I noticed that most of the applications in the box were from black candidates. I would imagine that many whites felt the same way as I did and did not bother wasting their time.

Still, I cling on to the hope that I at least get an interview. A friend of mine who was a Warden for 6 years at the university said that if I get an interview it means that there is a space for a white Warden and that I could well get the job. But she admitted that it is more likely that the university is required to employ a black Warden, even if it means employing someone less qualified or suitable to do the job than other candidates.

I wish that it could be a case of the best man winning, but that is not the way equity works in South Africa. The national rugby team is a perfect example. Even though they won the World Cup this year (which united the country with a sense of pride like nothing else), the coach has been driven to quit and the jubilation that swept through the country has been put out by all the emphasis placed on the fact that the team is made up of mostly white players. It overlooks the fact that the player of year is black and that black people in South Africa are quite comfortable with the idea of rugby being a ‘white’ sport anyway, just as whites are comfortable with the idea of soccer being a ‘black’ sport. The players were chosen according to ability, not colour. One would think that is a more equitable stance.

The employment situation for white males in official posts may be a lot better now that it was for the sculpture teacher I was chatting to, but there is still a lot of reverse discrimination and I have only now began to feel the brunt of it. It is a pity that the powers that be in the South African government practice the same kind of discrimination that they fought so hard to overcome. But such is the world.

In my exam today I wrote an essay on humanism, which argues that people have the capacity to live moral, productive lives in harmony with each other if only they employ reason. Unfortunately this is easier said than done.

For the past few weeks I have been feverishly trying to decide what to do next year once I finish my course. I was considering going to London for the obvious reasons, but then I was offered a job at a lovely school in Cape Town, which made me reconsider staying in South Africa. I was about to accept the job when I was also offered a post at an art school across the road from Rhodes University. The art school job is quite unlike a regular teaching post though. For one it is a specialised school, geared only towards teaching art and design. It is comprised of a sculpture, painting, ceramic, textile, drawing and graphic printmaking studio, each with a designated teacher. The teachers themselves are all artists, so the whole centre is a hub of creativity.

The art school basically caters for the public schools in the Grahamstown area. Pupils who wish to take art as a matric subject come to the art school by bus for their lessons. As such there are kids from three schools who come in at various times in the day for classes. For the kids, the art school is like a huge art classroom off their school campus. For the teachers at the art school, it is like a personal studio where they teach as well. Since there are no assemblies, parent teacher meetings, extra-curricular sport activities and so on at the art school the teachers have far more time on their hands to prepare well conceived lessons and to work on their own projects. Also, with class sizes never more than a few kids it is possible to get to know each pupil and give them proper attention. So unlike regular schools, there are hardly any discipline issues to contend with. The kids are for the most part delighted to get out of their schools for a while to come to the art centre and it clearly shows that they enjoy what they do there.

All in all I really couldn’t wish for a nicer job. Even the late Victorian school buildings and the peaceful area around them are perfect. It is in walking distance to the shops and cafes along High street and close enough to cycle to work every day. And the best thing about working there is that I can continue studying at Rhodes University to get a Masters Degree.

There is one aspect to the job however that is not so great and that is the pay. Some months ago, teachers across South Africa staged a huge four-week strike insisting on a 12% wage increase, with the government eventually agreeing to a 9% increase. Although this a welcome change, government employed teachers still earn an abysmal salary. The money I will earn at the art school will just cover my living expenses. Buying property next year as planned will simply be impossible. Nancy and I could survive off my salary alone, but we will have no way of saving any money unless Nancy finds a job, which may be difficult in Grahamstown. The only way to make a living is for us to start up a business of sorts. With the money I would have used as a deposit on a house I’ll try and set Nancy up with a little shop or something. Meanwhile, I’ll focus on building up a body of artwork that I can exhibit and make money off down the line.

Perhaps the lack of money in teaching is precisely the impetus I need to take my work as an artist very seriously, and for Nancy to seriously figure out how to get a business off the ground. We have both been toying with these ideas since we met, but until last year earning comfortable salaries made us too complacent to actually act on them. Now it is a matter of necessity.

If in a year or two I really have not made it as an artist and Nancy and I have failed to generate money by our own invention, I have no reservation about moving to England to earn those precious Pounds. The opportunity to earn money by teaching there is there to stay, but until I’m forced to take it up, I’m going to make a go of things in South Africa. If I do end up going to the UK down the line, I will at least have gained some teaching experience and hopefully a Masters to my name, which will get me a better job. As for Nancy, her English will have improved dramatically, which will make life in England so much smoother… Anyway, for now I am excited to experience what it is to have an enjoyable job. It is something I have wished for ever since I graduated from university seven years ago.

Almost everyday for the past year I have been going to St. Andrew’s College and the Diocesan School for Girls across the road as part of my teacher training. In that time I have become quite familiar with the two schools, especially College where I did the bulk of my teaching practice. I have made friends with the staff, gotten to know the kids, learnt the layout of the campus and generally figured out how things run.

Just as I am well settled into the school though I am done with my teaching training. Today was the last day I had to go into the schools, and I must say that I am going to miss it. Both of the schools are lovely places to teach. The pupils are polite and respectful and the staff a welcoming team. The schools are beautifully maintained too, which makes working there that much more pleasurable. With all the resources and facilities available at the schools there is no limit to what can be taught or produced by the kids and that too makes them stimulating, creative places to work.

Going into a school next year with the usual discipline issues and a low budget is going to be a tough adjustment. Hopefully I’ll get a job at a school more in line with College and DSG and avoid the harsh reality of teaching that is the norm. I leave for Johannesburg this evening to see my cousin and his wife who were recently married in Italy. While I am up there I’ll drop my CV off at some good schools. Then I fly down to the Cape to see my sister and go for an interview at St. Andrew’s brother school in Claremont. When I return to Grahamstown next week I’ll have an interview lined up at an art school across the road from the university. I would imagine that at least one of the schools will offer me a post for 2008. In the mean time I am still strongly considering going to the UK next year to find a post there. The exchange rate between the British Pound and South African Rand is 14 to 1, which makes it an attractive option from a financial point of view. Also, the chance to live a train ride away from various enchanting European countries is appealing.

My fate at the moment is subject to the way the wind blows, but I am not too put out by that. Whichever direction I go to from here seems fine.

Religion is something I very rarely talk about because I have nothing I wish to say about it. I don’t believe in God and that is that. A lot of other people believe otherwise of course and it doesn’t bother me. They have as much right to their beliefs and opinions as I do to mine. What does bother me though is when someone who believes in a god tries to convince me that I should do the same. It’s rude and insulting. I am intelligent enough to know why I don’t believe in God thank you very much.

There are quite a few hard-nosed Christians preparing to be teachers in my class. One of them is doing his teacher training at the same school as me. Today I noticed that he had brought a book on creationism to class, which I flipped through out of boredom. Not surprisingly it proposes that there is no such thing as evolution and that the world was created in no more than six days, coz that is what the bible says. It blows my mind that anyone could take the bible so literally and base their entire lives on it.

What really blows my mind is the thought of people like that teaching youngsters at school. How does a creationist, as they call themselves, teach science, or geography or biology with such a simplistic view of the world? Imagine taking a class to a natural history museum for instance and having to brush off the kids’ awe of the huge dinosaurs skeletons on display because, well, God didn’t create dinosaurs. Noah would have mentioned what a hassle they were get on the arc if there had been.

If I have kids one day I would much prefer that they go to a completely secular school, like those in France. I would certainly not allow a ‘creationist’ to teach my kids. In fact, if I had any say in the matter I would make it impossible for someone like that to even become a teacher. After all, teachers are supposed to educate young people, not close their minds by stifling any thought or reason that goes outside of the narrow parameters of the good book. That’s medieval.

Anyway, after school the student teacher whose book I leafed though earlier walked with me to the parking lot. After a little bit of small talk he predictably brought up his religious drivel and said, “You know, the world really was created in six days” to which I replied, “If that is what you believe” and changed the subject before he could try convert me. I was enormously grateful when he said instead that he will be going to Germany to do missionary work after he graduates. No doubt he’ll get to recognise a lot of German insults during his time there, but I guess that would make him feel like a martyr of sorts. In the mean time a class of kids somewhere in South Africa can carry on learning as much as they can.
 

Last week the word for Illustration Friday was “momentum”, which got me thinking because I seem to have lost my momentum during my teaching training recently. Although my lessons have been going well enough and I have built quite a good report with the students and the rest of the staff, I have a growing suspicion that I might not be cut out for teaching after all. The reason being that I am a hopeless disciplinarian.

When I am faced with a class of well-behaved intelligent kids I have no problem teaching them. All my best qualities as a teacher come to the fore, my lessons are enjoyable and productive and I quickly develop a close relationship with the class. But when I am faced with a class of ruffians I am at a loss. I just don’t have it in me to be domineering. I absolutely hate making people do things they don’t want to do and usually I avoid situations where that is required of me. If a student is not interested in the subjects I teach, I have no desire to persuade him or her otherwise. If they don’t do their work and fail their exams I don’t particularly care. I am exclusively interested in the people who take Art and Design because they want to and they want to get somewhere with it. For these people I will do all that I can to help them achieve their goals.

To reach the people who want to learn there needs to be a conductive learning environment though and that is where the policing work in teaching comes in. Even the best of classes will have the odd kid who wants to tip the apple cart and it is up to me to put kids like these in their place. But I am so terrible at it. I don’t yell at them, I don’t come across is threatening and I don’t punish them. I have always relied on treating the students I teach, even those who give me a hard time, with respect and kindness. It is a tightrope to walk though because it is easily seen as a weakness and a license to push me even further. My classes therefore go either very, very well, or not well at all.

Thankfully most of my classes go well, which makes the rowdy, hard to control ones seem less important. Still, after teaching a difficult class I always ask myself the same question: What am I thinking going into teaching? I must be mad!

The topic this week reminded me of the time I spent teaching ESL in Taiwan. 

This is the last vase I did for my Ceramics course, which brings my Art practical method to a close as well.

From now on it is all teaching with very little doing on my part. 

Over the weekend I did a series of drawings and paintings using alternative materials. It is a project that Art and Design teachers recommend as an opening to the course to get their students to loosen up and be creative. At first I was quite reluctant to use strange, messy and sticky things but afterwards I quite enjoyed seeing the results.

I also earned my first bit of money this year doing a line illustration for a book cover.
 

Today I went to my last class on teaching Design. As from next month I’ll be teaching the subject myself and be graded almost entirely on that. All the projects and assignments I have done so far hardly count towards my teaching certificate. I find that quite disappointing really because I have put so much time and effort into each of them. Then again, I did them because I wanted to not because I had to. After working for so many years with barely enough time in the day to make a sandwich, being able to do art everyday has been very rehabilitating. Now I feel like me again.

For the past 2 weeks in our Art method course we have been learning how to go about teaching ceramics to school kids. As usual we need to do some of the projects ourselves just to go over the techniques again and get a feel for the medium. The lecturers don’t really care about the artistic merit of what we do, as long as we have gone through the ‘making’ process. Nonetheless I always grab the opportunity to do something creative and try to produce a self-standing artwork. Often the lecturers think I am going overboard with the projects. One even asked me why it is that I want to be a teacher and not an artist. That gave me something to think about afterwards…

I always thought that art teachers had the ability to be artists in their own right, but chose to teach so that they could share their passion with others and generate a stable income as the case may be. The truth of the matter is that “those who can do and those who can’t teach”… I used to hate that stupid maxim until I started training to be a teacher. Now I can easily see the truth behind it… The vast majority of people training to be teachers with me know only the very basics of their specialist areas and surprisingly this does not hamper their ability to teach. Good teachers are basically distinguished by their ability to control a class and get information across in a positive manner. Those are the skills that are actually required to be a teacher. Still, I think that having a genuine interest in your subject area makes it easier to be inspiring when you teach, and having ability in that subject area makes it easier to give sound advice. It must be a nightmare to teach art for example when you can’t draw your ass from your elbow.
 

This morning I took in the first vase of a series to demonstrate various pottery techniques. The teacher took a quick glance at it and asked me rather caustically if I like flowers. I said I did. I meant to ask her if she knew of anyone who did not like flowers but held my tongue in case I had misheard the tone of her voice. I don’t think I did because she then asked if the thing was finished, implying, as art teachers do, that it was unsuccessful as it was. Needless to say I was thoroughly miffed. Granted the vase is hardly a work of art, but as a simple demonstration of the ‘pinch pot’ technique (which quite honestly a 3 year old could do) it was more than adequate.

It is strange how much we rely on compliments. They are half the reason we do anything. As a grown-ass man I thought I had become immune to criticism I don’t agree with, but that is obviously not the case. I guess if it was I would be a really hard person to get along with and a pretty harsh teacher too.