The Punahou-South Africa Math Project 2001

Punahou Bulletin Interview – Mike Pavich & Jim Clarke

In July 2001, a team of four high school mathematics teachers, including two from Punahou School, traveled to South Africa to conduct two workshops for 96 grade 11 and 12 math teachers. Led by Punahou teacher Yunus Peer, formerly of Port Shepstone, the South Africa team included Jim Clarke and Mike Pavich of Punahou; Mike Vogel, former Punahou teacher; and Steve Hanks of Honokaa High School on the Big Island. What transpired was an invaluable cooperative learning effort between the teachers, an outstanding example of outreach from one community to another, and a life-changing experience for each participant. The Bulletin talked to Jim and Mike about their experiences. Here’s what they had to say:

What were your expectations or goals for the trip?

Jim: Truthfully, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. I was aware, however that since 1994, there’s been a spirit of a rebirth in South Africa, of a nation emerging from a tragic past of Apartheid. The education of the vast majority of South Africa’s people was severely crippled by the policies of the day. The South Africans believe that education is the key to success in “lifting up” their country. I agree, and decided that it would be wonderful to offer their teachers what I could as an experienced mathematics teacher.

Mike: When you’ve been teaching over 20 years, you still find it exciting to see what and how other people do things. My goal was to share my knowledge with the South African teachers as well and to learn what I could from them.

Where in South Africa were your workshops held?

Mike: We held two one-week workshops: the first at the Vaal Triangle Technikon in Vereeniging, Gauteng, and the other at the Total Education Development Centre in Port Shepstone, KwaZulu-Natal.

How many South African teachers attended the workshops? What subjects did each of you teach?

Jim: Two groups in two provinces: 60 in Gauteng and 36 in KwaZulu. I taught calculus, quadratics and absolute value. These are some of the topics on a matric exam that the students must take at the end of the year. Mike Pavich taught exponential functions and series of sequences, Steve Hanks geometry and Mike Vogel trigonometry.

One South African teacher said, “We are asked to some workshops and they are a waste of time. This was finally a workshop where we got something. You Hawaii teachers lifted our spirits.” How were your workshops different from others they attended?

Mike: When we first arrived in South Africa, here we were-four white guys and our leader [Yunus Peer], an Indian, teaching all black teachers. I thought, “What kind of credibility were we going to have? They are probably thinking, here’s four white guys who are going to tell us what to do·” I’m talking about having had to confront a group of people who’ve been persecuted by the race that I’m a part of. But it turned out to be the reverse. We didn’t going into the classroom saying, “We have all the answers, that you’ve got to change.” Instead, we went in there and said, “Here’s how we teach at Punahou and we want to share with you a bit about our system. Please tell us about your system and how you teach.” We spent a lot of time talking about that. It was a great exchange.

Jim: If you go a workshop, you can tell the difference between someone who puts on a workshop and someone who shares their teaching strategies and cares about how successfully they get their concepts across. We taught in a different way. We didn’t say, “this is the only way to do math.” We said, “this is what we do.” We loved them. We brought aloha to them.

What stood out as most significant in terms of the difference in learning conditions in South Africa -vs-the United States?

Mike: The South African teachers are motivated and talented but have no resources and no support and the number of students is overwhelming. Most of the schools we visited were rural schools where teachers teach 60-70 kids per class, six or seven classes per day. One teacher said she teacher 400-450 kids a day, grades 7-12! Many of the schools have no textbooks, electricity or running water. They may all have water catches. The one school that we saw had concrete floors but I would imagine that some did not. Some had individual desks or teacher desks – a long, rectangular desk that sat three students. They had chalkboards but the teachers brought their own chalk from classroom to classroom.

Jim: On the day we arrived, Yunus’ family took us to a school situated on a mountain top. There was no electricity or water. As we approached, we could hear singing. While we stood outside, the whole student body (about 800 kids) sang for us. It was the most incredible thing I’ve heard. Then a dapperly dressed teacher (or perhaps the headmaster) came up to us and begged. “Is there anything you can give us? We need paper, pencils and pens” I will never forget that.

Were you surprised to find anything that was the same?

Jim: That teachers have the same concerns that we have with our learners, such as dealing with unmotivated kids. At Punahou we can at least call their parents, who usually are on the kids in no time. They don’t have that in South Africa. The parents are either not around and the students are raised by big brother or sister or Grandma or Grandpa. Mom and Dad might be living in Durban working to make money.

Mike: Other similar concerns included how to get kids to memorize formulas, do their homework, stop getting things mixed up. In my teaching, I try to come up with tricks to help kids remember things, like the slope of the horizontal line is zero and not undefined. My tricks are simple.

Did you teach students as well?

Jim: All together, we worked with 130 students. In the first group outside of South Johannesburg, the kids were all black. In Port Shepstone they were mixed: black and whites. The whites had gone to better schools.

Mike: We taught some Indian students too. Indians went to an township school that was pretty good, comparable to almost any public school in Hawaii.

Were these teachers South African familiar with all of these math concepts and able to follow your lectures?

Jim: They did; it was amazing. At Punahou, I teach calculus only. Someone who teaches geometry at our school does not teach series of sequences or calculus. But the South African teachers teach every subject. They obviously had to learn a lot on their own.

Mike: I think they help each other too. Within the school there’s a strong support system, assuming you have teachers who are motivated. For example, there were two female teachers in Port Shepstone who were constantly talking and learning from each other. As teachers, they must feel that they are different in their community because of their education.

Was there any one thing about Punahou’s system that especially impressed the South African teachers?

Mike: That we specialize in teaching one topic fascinated them. One African teacher questioned, “why can’t we use your system; why couldn’t they break it up in areas of strengths?” The South African teachers randomly choose their topics from their outdated books-texts from the 1950s?? with no pictures or practical application. The books are not user friendly, they are theorems and rules with no explanation. There’s no sense that the learner needs to be motivated or needs to have some continuity. There was no sequence that made sense to us- today geometry, tomorrow calculus, the next day trig. It is an old British system that was brought in and has survived Apartheid.

How do you think that you helped to change the level of math education in South Africa?

Jim: I think when I left there the teachers were a lot more motivated. They got together amongst themselves and had good conversations. They learned math from us; we learned from them.

Mike: I made them think about the question,” Are you the sage on the stage or the guide on the side?” I tried to be a little more facilitative and they responded to that in thought and action.

How does your experience in South Africa add to what you already bring to your class?

Mike: My students may not like it, but I’m going to include some of those problems given in the South African matriculation exam on my tests! The log and exponential function problems on the exam are taken from their textbooks and are more difficult than those in our system.

Jim: We stayed in Roshnee, which was an Indian township in Gauteng. The mosque was right around the corner. We heard a call to worship every morning and evening. I’ve come to better understand Islam and Indian culture in general. I feel even more comfortable relating to people, including my students, who belong to those cultures. Before 1994, South Africa has struggled with apartheid for over 350 years.

What do you believe you did, during your short visit, to help lessen the rift in the country?

Jim and Mike: We gave them the impression that whites don’t have to be domineering and condescending. We worked together harmoniously. There’s so much work that needs to be done; it will take two generations at least to get the economy on its feet. Education is critical to making this happen. We helped just a handful of teachers. We will need at least ten of these workshops every year for the next 20 years to make a serious impact. But you’ve got to start somewhere.

If you could share your most powerful memory of your South Africa experience, what would it be?

Jim and Mike: The most powerful moment was when the faculty sang Shosholoza. We were at the “aloha ceremony” that took place at the City Hall. The mayor and other dignitaries were there. Each participant received a certificate with a Punahou logo stating that he or she had successfully completed the math workshops. For many of the black teachers it was the first time they had stepped foot in the Hall-and been hugged or congratulated by a white person. At one point, one of the teachers came down and took the microphone to say something. Suddenly from the back of room came a loud, deep voice singing in the Zulu language. The entire crowd of teachers responded loudly in chorus. This went on throughout the song. The song was Sosholoza, a black working man’s song. It was incredibly moving, a “chicken skin” experience.

What does this experience mean to you a lifelong learner?

Jim: I learned a lot about the African culture and an incredible amount about the Muslim culture. I learned that many of the teaching problems are universal. I also found that appearances can be deceiving. We’re all one family. We think of South Africa on the other side of the world. Physically it is, but people are just as nice as the guy next door. My experience is difficult to describe. I left a part of my heart there. I have a certain love of the country that I didn’t have before.

Is there anything else that you would like to add?

Jim: South Africa is a brand new democracy. The people have been yearning for contact with the outside world for centuries. We created a wonderful partnership with these people. But we couldn’t have done it without the support of Punahou President Jim Scott and administrators like Diane Anderson. I am deeply grateful to them and to the Peer family for this experience.

Mike: Likewise, my thanks to Punahou, Dr. Scott, Diane, Yunus and his family, and all who made the trip possible. It is one of the most gratifying things I’ve done in all my years of teaching. To go back with Yunus to help out people in his homeland made us all proud. We wish we could have done more.