Day 15 lockdown diaries Corona teacher frustration

Covid-19: 2003 cases and 24 deaths in South Africa to date

 

Sitting here with some hot chocolate and no desire to type about the day … barely anything to type …

Last night, it happened, from today we have another 21 days as a country to get through in lockdown … dear Lord I hope downstairs decides that changing his habits away from smoking due to lack of cigarettes is the best idea ever! & not letting his frustration out on anyone in the process, please Lord… So our president has chosen human life over economy. That takes a great deal of faith, trust, strength and empathy. I admire and appreciate his ability to speak in public. The script was well written; and it is commendable that top brass are taking pay-cuts of one third to help the unemployed masses. If they can take such cuts, then why have all the top brass had so much any way? Private companies too… debatable issue to say the least I am sure.

So money needs to come in from who knows where to help all those in poverty. Dear Lord, PLEASE be with those collecting, organising and distributing those funds. Please, Dear Father God. Help this be an anomaly to our corrupt history.

Yes, so yesterday I learnt that my absolute exhaustion through the “online” teaching is about to get worse as I have to now set up a Google Classroom for 3 grade 9 classes and 2 grade 8 classes to join my non-participative 3 senior classes… this is going to be a killer! I feel for the teachers who have lives and families and other responsibilities, especially where the men are lazy and don’t assist with housework and the female teaching wife lets him be so … or the single parent trying to look after their own brood and the other 250 odd children all needing attention online whilst their parents hover in the classroom too… this is all, so, not, cool!

Anyway, I allowed myself a little sleep-in this morning, I deserve it. Then it was journaling with a whole lot of prayer to get through this ghastly, black hole online teaching scenario. Ugh. Pray, pray, pray.

Then breakfast after posting a general uplifting video … well, I thought it was. A video about sticking together as a team… but then a grade 10 types “ja, like the team of men who tried to mug my dad!” What do I do with that?

“Sorry, you need to get a bigger team than their’s on your side.” He replied that he would. Ugh.

So I plugged into WatsApp grade 12… wished them happy Good Friday, if they celebrated… went like this:

Good morning lovely people 👋🏻😁

To those who are awake, aware and practising Christians who are observing and holding reverence to this day that acknowledges the integrated presence of suffering, conflict, challenge, hurt, pain and difficulty in this thing called “Life”; I wish you a truly deepened experience of truth, enlightenment and awe at the glory, power, wisdom and love that is globally recognised on this Good Friday. Stay blessed and provided for in the grace and mercy of your faith 🙏

So, if you observe this incredible day that marks such an awesome truth for “Life”; a blessed Good Friday to you, too.

There were no grade 12 takers on the group for the quiz… there was no response on the pracs, until one lone chap started to ask various questions; which I duly answered, biting my tongue at the fact that I had already covered what he asked and that it SERIOUSLY grates me that people do not LISTEN. LISTENING is a fundamental skill that is surely dying!

Grade 11 – deader than dead. Dear Father God – please help me know what to do. The black hole of disinterested apathy is killing me. Only Your grace and Spirit is helping me push on … Help my colleague and I in these unknown waters with children who don’t seem to care…

Grade 10… a personal message from a child who had done the work and modelled a “Greek Costume”. I was thrilled and hopeful… get to the class. Nothing. Dead too, other than the chirps around the “unity” video… it was such a fun task and my grade 10s last year had a ball wearing sheets. I am at a loss. I cannot connect with current teenagers and am clearly not suited for the role I am in at the moment.

It was interesting to think that as much as these boys rip each other off and make it a “norm”, none of them “like” being ripped off and it has created great insecurity amongst them and they don’t trust each other… whichever is the cause here: me, and it has been mentioned that they don’t want me as their teacher, or them, exceptionally insecure and unable to trust their group; it is sad and out of my hands to rectify. The majority part of my public holiday felt like a black hole of wasted time and it sucked.

I went to my WatsApp and appreciated the Good Friday wishes. I pondered “The Alchemist” and “The Soul of the World” and how it is God’s Soul and ours, together with nature, that are one… how does “The Soul of the World” engage with that which knows not what it is? How does that which is, show and uplift that which does not want to know…? Or must it leave? The problem is, I don’t think it is in the nature of “The Soul of the World” to walk away, and thus it passes on, still frustrated, and still trying; or can it find peace in the knowledge that some will never know the ‘Light’ of knowing their Oneness with ” The Soul of the World”?

It is much for me… too much…

I coloured-in: “With hope all things are possible”; a secular colouring-in book that manipulated the original true quote – “With God, all things are possible.” Humans… such inexplicable creatures.

I have a bookshelf with half a shelf of books I have bought and wanted to read… I picked up, ironically, “Alone”, by Brett Archibald, to read the story of a local guy and his hours of survival bobbing in the ocean all on his own … I can relate on so many levels…

To all those participating in wrapping the globe with prayer for 24 hours, as a Mexican wave goes from 7pm to 7pm, & eventually into 7am’s, crosses the globe –  I thank you. May God hear our prayers and fundamentally stand up as The All-Knowing God, and do and be and create, as only He knows best, for us all. Amen!

 

Resignation Letter to Learners from Dramatic Arts Teacher

Dear Learners,

RE: My resignation

Firstly, I would like to apologise for stepping into your classroom with my own agenda – to see if I would like / could teach within the private school system. I left the state syllabus as I had taught it for so long, I desired something new. I wanted to teach in a new environment and make sure I was accurate in my decision of where to settle for my last set of pension earning decades. I made the decision and accepted the post because I believed that God had firmly positioned everything, literally everything, for me to move over and be of service in a new school, with a new group of learners.

Now I sit in major doubt as to how I can serve.

I am well aware of your ability to adapt and adjust and get on with living and doing your tasks. I am sure that you would understand my situation and can carry on fairly unscathed by my actions. After all, I have taught you – in my brief few months here – not to let people who do so little for you, control so many of your emotions (courtesy of Mr Will Smith). And that is where I now find myself – as someone who can do very little for you in your context.

You see, your educative environment is purely ‘mark’ directed. All of you place your worth and your level of esteem and ability in the hands of your teachers and strangers who apply a letter to your efforts. I hate that. I hate that your efforts are compared and categorised when you are SUCH unique individuals with so many strengths and abilities that cannot and will never be ‘markable’; yet you don’t see it that way. You haven’t been trained to see it that way. You have been trained to take that chronological number that has been assigned to someone’s categories of worth, and you make that assumptive value your personal value. I hate that. You are not the value of some other human’s assessment and judgment of you. Your value is that of gold and silver, refined in THE Refiner’s Fire. Sculpted by THE Potter’s Hands and sealed in The Kiln of The Most Awesome Creator. Your abilities are limitless. Your talents span the width of your imagination, but therein lies the rub: educators, often people who don’t even believe in themselves, people who have suffered under the same marking system that you are suffering, are in control. I hate that. I hate that people who are not called to teaching, are teaching. They are inflicting their insecurities on you, and contorting you to bend to their whims and their rules and comfort zones by squashing you into the boxes created by random numbers, otherwise known as: Percentages. And you, in your innocence and ignorance as children, accept it. You accept the forces of control and irrationality, and the confines and restrictions the syllabus and system impose on you and brand into you. I hate it.

I sit in this moral conundrum. Who am I to judge? Isn’t it only God who should judge? Who am I to say this is worth an “A” when the learner has been lazy and then just uses God’s Given Talent at the last minute on stage? Who am I to say that the learner who has worked so hard, given everything and stretched themselves into empathy, passion and courage at the highest level, is only worth a “C” because she doesn’t have the acting technique that I prefer? A for Ass, C for Courageous… A for Arrogant, C for Committed… A for Algebra, C for Calculus? The marks assigned by strangers in Drama, for an Exam are meaningless to me, for such reasons. Yet, for you, for my learners, they mean everything. I find it absurd, absolutely absurd.

I find myself now in turmoil over what you expect, what your requirements are for a teacher – someone who will get you an “A”, when some of you are just not in possession of the “X-Factor”, you are not categorically, by the piece of paper and the blocks I have to tick, an “A”… but your parents, your family, your friends, your teachers who have you as their ‘pet’, are telling you that you are an “A”. Why do they say that? Because they love you and that is what they see, that is what they know. Because they don’t have assigned tick boxes. Because they have no idea what vocal characterisation is, or what it entails. They don’t have a clue about projection and body dynamic and the technical “have to have’s” for an “A” in a Drama Exam. They are right, God has created you as a potential “A” candidate, but that “A” is not in Dramatic Arts in the private school system. In the state system – yes, there you can get an “A” because your interpretation, your ability to stand cold on a stage and use only yourself to engage with an audience is considered “A” material. It is not so in the private system… and this is where the private system clashes with ME.

It clashes with my belief in all of you and your incredibly hard work being worth that “A”. It clashes with my belief in the examiner being open to everything s/he sees on stage. It clashes with my belief that an actor with nothing on stage is more powerful than an actor who needs the prop of a prop… I can see your soul, your integrity, your truth in the character when it is only you up there, when I am not distracted by a tea-towel in your hand or an item that you throw across the stage. I am not cut off from you when you have a table in front of you. I am not subjected to being an observer of your conversation with a statue on stage. I engage with you, you move my soul, I see your soul has moved, when you interact with me, the soul in the audience who is listening to your message, hearing your words and forming a soulful bond with the character you have taken on in order to take me on a journey. I cannot watch you giving soul on stage and place it in boxes. I cannot tell you that your everything is worth so little, when it is not. I cannot train you in my way, I cannot ask you to act to my style of laying your soul open on stage, when your external examiners want props, want set, want pure type-cast, stereotypical, by-the-book, copy-and-paste, done the same over and over, performances. I am not made that way. I can’t expect every 17/18 year old to contort their body into the assumption that a 50 year old has no strength and must change their body to be ‘old’! I can’t force you to assume that you know exactly what a playwright ‘made’ a character to be, and that anyone on the planet could recreate a stereotype of something someone else thinks. You are not parrots or monkeys. You are not made to ‘fakely’ copy another director’s perceptions or preferences. You are you, with your own ideas, your own interpretations, your own directorial perceptions, I cannot and will not force you to lose integrity with yourself to copy and paste your work to be that of someone else.

I am not made to follow man and fit into the whims of mans’ insecurities. I walk in the knowing, the absolute conviction, that God has placed me where He has in order to touch souls. In order to awaken the inner light that is so dull inside you, so that you can believe in yourselves, so that you can know the truth of what eternal is. So that you can walk away having experienced something ‘out of this world’, something that has allowed you a moment of ‘touching God’; and then gone a step further by giving you a stage, a platform, an audience, to help them touch a moment with God, with themselves and their truths and insecurities, to open their hearts and know that ‘it is ok’, ‘you are not alone’…

The problem comes in – I cannot get you the marks set by this system, this syllabus, purely because I don’t believe in the system or the syllabus. I don’t know how to dance to the tune of materialism and worldly judgment. I only want to dance to the tune of truth, of praise and worship, of love, honesty, sincerity, authenticity and all that is so hard to achieve in our current society.

I sit, disturbed at a very deep level. I sit and type this letter to you in confusion with regards to the rigidity and conformism that I have found is dictated into ART, into an EXPRESSIVE and PERSONAL TO THE CREATOR subject. I am not made in a capacity that can serve you in this ‘private school’ context. Its non-transparency, for very real reasons I am sure, as I have had to personally deal with you annihilating me for ticking boxes that you disagreed with. I have had your parents annihilate me for not giving you the “A” they “know” you deserve. I have seen teachers with unhealthy “preferences” and completely subjective “reasoning” sway examiners with nonsense to get marks “improved”. I know firsthand why non-transparency would be chosen… even so, non-transparency with only ONE examiner is not right or healthy. It is secretive and beyond subjective. The State system, with its full transparency, will have a minimum of two external examiners and then open discussions with teachers, thus often having four examiners deciding on a mark. This is healthy, this is objective, this eliminates personal preference and personal subjectivity. One examiner, on a bad day, could skew an entire set of marks. One examiner who does not like a particular style, or has his/her own agenda can completely whitewash a year to poor marks because s/he ‘didn’t like it’, or has ‘seen it done better’, ‘or preferred the movie’ or ‘was raped herself and that is not what it looks or feels like’, or ‘I haven’t studied dance, or danced myself (I’m not that talented) but I wouldn’t say that was good’… Sub-conscious jealousies, personal agendas, self-righteousness, lack of understanding of a piece; all of those can factor into a single ‘examiner’ and how s/he allocates his/her personal choice of marks… I don’t believe it is right or fair to have one solo adjudicator who bears the burden of allocating marks without confirmation from another, and who gets sole control over setting a judgment over another human being’s creative work.

I find myself despondent, at my wits end trying to work through this, trying to fathom how I can work in such an unfair and distorted system. This is why I am resigning my dear children. I don’t want to be aligning you with my dreams and goals and lighting your souls, when your goals are the marks given by one person, in one moment, making one judgment call on you. I am not in the business of teaching for marks, of teaching to make some single other person able to put you in a box, ‘the best box’; because I don’t believe in ‘boxing’ anyone’s creative efforts…

I have also now encountered a horror of truth in the examination assessment that I have had to live through. In the feedback I asked for help, because I had been told that I had to tell you what to do. . . a.k.a. “Direct you.” Me? That if you aren’t working, if you aren’t getting the interpretation that the examiner wants from you (bearing in mind that I am not even told what that interpretation or expectation is with regards to what marks they assign – so I am expected to orientate myself around some invisible ‘standard’ / ‘expectation’); then it is my ‘fault’ – so … this means that your exam mark, your ticked box has nothing to do with your performance and everything to do with MY directing! Who is the most important part of any play? “The Director”. Who is the cog in any show? “The Director”. Who gets nailed with the criticism and torn to pieces if a play is ‘bad’ (as dictated by some person ticking their own random preference boxes)? “The Director”.  It’s so completely twisted that I would be required to tell you how to act on stage and then MARK MYSELF! I am not into teaching practical Dramatic Arts to have myself come in and tell other people what to do. I did not go to University to become a Director; I studied my second qualification to TEACH. The goal of this teacher is to create INDEPENDENT, self-aware, capable to handle the real world learners, not DEPENDENT on me human beings… Yes, there are wiser people than ourselves out there, yes, we go to others for advice, yes, input from others is always advisable, but telling others what to do and how to do it? Surely not… What happens when my poor direction then reduces a learner to have lower marks because I didn’t notice something? Then, what about when you refuse to listen to my direction? When you do what you feel like and then I get slammed for it? Not fair, not ‘right’.

On top of all this, apparently, if learners don’t type up their programmes, then I must do it for them? What the? What on earth is that teaching any child? If you don’t do your work, it’s ok, someone else will do it for you and because that other person does it so well, you can get a great mark and call it “my mark”? How is that healthy? Helpful? Truthful? I am not employed to be a slave, or someone who is going to take on all responsibility for people who are apathetic and couldn’t care… I am not made to hide mistakes and flaws, I want them revealed, I want consequences for actions and behaviour to happen. I want learners to learn to be responsible for their own work, their own future, their own lives.

This in totality means, I do not fit the private school system. It means my values; my ethic and my purpose do not align with the methodology and learning system that you (and your parents) have chosen for your education. It means I am not fit to provide the service you are expecting or the mark alignment and mark affirmations that you crave and build your lives around. It means I am not fit to be your Dramatic Arts teacher.

You are amazing learners and the potential within you to become awesome adults is great. I truly wish and pray that you know it, see it, believe it and become proud of yourselves; and that you achieve in fabulous ways in all the years ahead… how you gauge and assess your level of achievement… well, I hope it is not by some tick box or the ratings of some “Body” that some humans have declared “important”. I hope that your assessment of yourselves lies purely in the depth of your Souls and how you engage with YOUR FATHER IN HEAVEN. In the darkest part of the night may you be able to say: “It is well”, “It is good”, “I am content, I am at peace, I have served a mighty purpose, and an amazing God in a loving, kind, true and eternally pleasing way today”. Amen.

Stay blessed and know you are Loved,

Sir.

Your Torch

 

In my new context it feels like I have entered another world. In stark comparison to my upbringing, and how circumstances and context shaped me to be innovative and creative and make a plan in some incredibly challenging situations, I am now meeting more and more of the mindset “someone else must make a plan for me”. “Someone else must do the work”, “Someone else must provide the answers”, “Someone else must spoon-feed me whilst I do the least amount of work possible”, “The responsibility is not mine”, “Someone else is to blame”, “It was their fault, it is their fault, it is not my fault” (like passing the buck is going to solve anything or help anyone – so annoying!) … on and on and on it appears to be entering my space; especially in my teaching role where learners want marks for doing barely anything (for example: I’m talking about learners using a calculator to do their two times table!), people want more pay and rewards for doing less work, people want the system to change (often to help them to do less work), but want other people to action it and make it change whilst they just go on and on and on talking, moaning and grumbling about it… and physically doing to make change happen.

 

After much prayer in my frustration and lack of capacity to spoon feed the academic and practical needs of dozens and dozens of learners, God sent me a very practical image and when I went about demonstrating the vision to some of my learners, the effect was quite something: There were lights starting to twinkle in their understanding, if only for a moment. A seed of thought has at least been planted.

 

In case it may assist someone else, the image was of a torch.

 

I placed the torch on a classroom desk, pointing upwards.

I then asked the learners: “Right, is the desk giving the torch its light?” The response was “No.”

“Am I, the ‘important’ teacher, giving the torch the power to shine?” No, again.

“Is the learner closest to the torch giving it the power to shine?” No.

“Is all of your joint power giving the torch the power to shine?” No.

And so on with regards to sunlight, chairs, etc, depending on the level of the learners.

 

“Ok, so none of this is giving the torch the power to shine. So what is then?”

“Ah, ma’am, it’s the batteries! The batteries are giving it its power!”

“Correct! You are like this torch boys and girls. I am not going to make you shine, I can’t give you the power to shine, you have to do it on your own. Your parents can’t, your friends can’t, you have to choose to use your own batteries to shine. You have to find good things to charge your batteries with so that your light can shine bright and strong, no matter what darkness comes along.”

 

The voices were quiet, but the eyes showed me they got it, some seniors even let out a huge breath and gave a “Sh-oe”…

 

I carried on. I turned the torch off and asked them what was happening. “The light is off Ma’am.”

I turned it on, “And now?”

“It’s on Ma’am.”

I repeated this a few times.

Then I concluded with: “Some of you are walking around completely switched off, please stop it. Please choose to charge your batteries in good places, on good energy and turn your light on: be aware, find the joy inside you, find the creativity, responsibility and awesomeness that live inside you and please choose to let them shine out to light up your lives and the lives of others. Please choose to walk around switched on.”