In this article, a middle and high school English teacher shares a life-changing educational and professional development experience that has enhanced his professional practice.
Last summer, I went to the LEAP School in Cape Town, South Africa, through the Teach With Africa (TWA) program. I was hoping to build relationships that I could bring back to my classroom and share those experiences with students and teachers in my community.
TWA, a San Francisco–based nonprofit, seeks to partner with schools in Africa by sending teams of teachers to African schools and bringing students and teachers from those schools to the United States. In addition to exchanging learning and teaching approaches, TWA fellows participate in outreach projects in the surrounding underserved communities.
In its third year, TWA is working with three LEAP School campuses in South Africa and intends to develop partnerships in other countries throughout the continent. I joined the 2010 TWA team as a middle and high school English teacher from Pacific Ridge School in Carlsbad, Calif. I also codirect the high school's service learning program.
Teach With Africa places the most value on the least important word in its name. The word "with" signifies that we, the American visitors, were not simply "in" Africa or teaching "for" Africans, and, ideally, we were not there to "teach Africans." We were collaborators. We were mutual learners and, therefore, mutual teachers.
During the eight weeks of the fellowship, the visiting and host teachers partnered, took turns teaching and observing one another, and discussed pedagogical practices and curricular development. The visitors also got to know LEAP students inside and outside the classroom.
Additionally, according to founder John Gilmour's vision, LEAP has built relationships with the surrounding communities, including schools, clinics, and grassroots nonprofits in townships. On the campus, LEAP employs immigrants with previous professional experience in engineering, medicine, and the sciences in its Learning Center. These rich opportunities to connect and learn gave me much to take home to my classroom and helped me think about my students' needs differently.
TWA was careful to build into the fellowship a two-week home stay in the township of Langa for its teachers to help us understand the students we met. We needed to gain a sense of how students lived, ate, slept, and traveled to and from school. We got to ride a school bus, help cook meals at home, and meet family and neighbors in Langa. That I am from Southeast Asia provided learning opportunities for both sides once their stares turned into questions.
Enriched by the relationships and all that I had learned about South Africa, its people, and its distinct cultures, I redesigned the syllabus of my advanced placement English course to include some of the texts I got to read while in Cape Town. Needless to say, personal interactions with the people and places made the literature come to life for me, and I also was able to transport my students to the life stories and voices of the people at LEAP.
In the future, I hope to work with TWA and my school to bring teachers and student teachers from LEAP schools to my own so that they can observe our active classrooms during their summer holiday. By the time this is published, I will have been back to LEAP once again with TWA, building on the relationships that I began last year and that my students began for themselves this year. Another teacher and I are taking 14 students from our courses, both of which contained a unit on South Africa, to Cape Town and LEAP School. We will be spending two weeks learning, understanding, and sharing with LEAP and its partner communities.
We all hope that these relationships will continue to grow and draw others and that the collaboration we have formed will enrich more lives on opposite sides of the world.