Aviva Halani – Math.

For the second year in a row, I’ve procrastinated writing this reflection. I don’t consider myself a good writer and so I struggle with how to express the emotions I feel when I do TABSA work. Words do not seem adequate to describe the camaraderie I feel when working with the 2016 team, the joy I felt dancing with the local teachers at the gala we had in Port Elizabeth, the pride I felt when hearing how a South African teacher changed her pedagogy after our workshops last year, or the admiration I feel for the Swazi teachers who are dedicated to teaching even though the drought threatens to close schools due to the lack of water for sanitation.

Last year, I joined the team at the recommendation of a science colleague, Alison Hobbie, whom I had seen around campus but did not know well. It was a bit daunting to fly across the world to join a group of people I had never met, as I showed up late due to another teaching commitment. This year, once again joining the team late, it felt more like I was going to a family reunion. There were many familiar faces I was looking forward to seeing and several new ones I was excited to get to know. It’s an exhilarating feeling to be surrounded by other people who are committed to the same goal of helping our African colleagues and, for the second year, I was honored to be amongst such a group.

The four weeks I spent in Southern Africa this summer were some of the happiest I’ve had all year. It was hard work, but extremely rewarding. The teachers were once again like sponges, desperate for anything we could share with them so that they could better help their learners. During the second week of the trip, we held two sets of workshops in Mpumalanga. During the second one, the math team expected about 85 teachers to be split between two classrooms. Instead, we were inundated with teachers. The next thing I knew, Natasha Crawford and I were trying to cover financial math with 76 teachers in the room. I overwhelmed and scattered. Jim Metz came to help us out, but I still felt as if we weren’t adequately reaching every group of teachers and I worried some were being left behind. Then it dawned on me that the teachers in that room routinely have 60-80 learners in a class and they don’t have other teachers to help them out. I came away with a greater admiration for what those teachers go through on a daily basis. To be honest, if I were in their shoes, I’d probably become frustrated and possibly check out. Yet they persevere and attend workshops, going so far as to ask for more, because they are dedicated to their craft and their learners.

In that same week, I saw some teachers I had met the previous year at the workshops we held in Kamhlushwa. One pulled me aside to tell me that her teaching had changed from the previous year. She emphasized that our workshops and our conversations had helped her realize that learners often want to learn. When they struggle, it is because they are figuring things out and not because they don’t want to learn. She routinely has learners present solutions to one another and will sometimes pretend that she does not know an answer so that the learners have to make sense of the problem together. And, her results improved! It was exciting to hear that she had embraced a pedagogy I believe can be beneficial for students and even more exciting to hear that, as a lead teacher, she was passing on such an approach to her peers.

My parents, who grew up in rural eastern Africa in conditions similar to those I observed this summer, have always instilled in me the importance of education, saying that it is one thing that can never be taken away from a person. From them, I internalized the value of education, but to a certain extent, I took mine for granted. Seeing the limited access to educational opportunities my African colleagues had pushed me to reflect on my own background. I came away from this TABSA trip with a greater appreciation for the opportunities I’ve had and with renewed passion for increasing educational access for others.