How much do I love the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) students!?! Sooooooo incredibly much. Though I certainly expected to get to know this group and probably to like them, even bond with them, I can tell you with absolute honesty that I did not expect to meet people who might be lifelong friends and educator-partners. What an experience!
Interestingly, there’s quite little I can really say about CPUT itself because we were so immersed in our experiences with the students (all pre-service teachers) that the university itself fell to the periphery for me. What I can tell you is that the lack of resources the university experienced was at times obvious, but that my experiences and discussions with their students led me to believe that any lack of material resources was met with superior teaching and learning. Working with those students on the CRSPT left me with the same sense that the Changemaker Symposium did, but even more intensely. Considering the chasms between us, I was amazed with the seamless and organic nature of our conversations, including conversations in which we had strong differences of opinion. As with the symposium, building empathy with the CPUT students was key, and it happened far faster than I might have thought. J.C., for example, became one of us. And the General---need I really say more?! On our final morning with this group, Dr. Jez left us with the CPUT students to make some final arrangements and gather copies. After completing a quick project, we had time to spare, so we turned on some South African music and danced and laughed and snapped goofy pictures and talked about South African lyrics until nothing else on earth seemed more appropriate for that moment and space in time. There were no pretences, no awkward silences. We were one team of educators, now friends. Now, this may all seem purely social and thus disconnected from our course content, but it’s actually not. Instead, it is demonstrative of how empathy-building and changemaking and community development all work. We were, perhaps without even realizing it, putting the practices we were exploring for K-12 students into practice amongst ourselves. And it worked splendidly. We began as individual students from varying cultural backgrounds and ended as one community of global educator-friends.
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AuthorI'm Kelly. I teach English as a Second Language, business English, and writing. I eat poems for dinner. Archives
January 2019
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