A mellow, rich wine which evokes the image of ancient ruins,
the flavour of grand and glorious civilizations long gone now,
but with the freshness that hope brings
as new grapes come to fruition on old, old vines.
1 October 2009
From: Mark Hanington
To: Yunus Peer
Re: TWB SA 2009 or, How I Spent My Summer Vacation.
Yunus,
Asking me to write a reflection on my summer with you in South Africa is like asking, “Oh, would you put together a little something about the Pacific Ocean for me…?”
Good lord. Where to start…
At the beach.
Much of my South Africa experience has a recreational feeling to it.
Oh, the places we went, oh the people (and things) we saw…
At the office…
Working with South African teachers was both inspiring and troubling. Inspiring because of their determination to make something – an education for their learners – out of nothing – a system with woefully inadequate resources.
From the math perspective, what the teachers I worked with most wanted was information on probability. Most have no training in this area at all. So future math teachers: bring coins, dice and card decks, and expect to leave most of them behind. As on of the participants said to me, as he was leaving, “Mark, I have taken two of your dice…”
“Oh,” I said. “A thief!”
“No,” he replied, “I am not a thief because I have told you what I have done.”
“Oh,” I said again. “An honest thief then…”
I have a copy of the math book their students use. (I am a thief! But evidently an honest one.) It is clear that most of the probability lessons were created with the idea in mind that the teachers don’t know probability, and so the activities have a very constructivist bent. All very well if every student or pair of students has a textbook, which is far from the case. So bring lessons and activities galore on probability. For reasons that are not clear to me, teachers seem awed and terrified by probability trees. Something to ease this pain would be appreciated by them.
What I found teachers most commented on in their evaluations were the little tricks I taught them along the lines of the finger-computer, and that ridiculous dance. But computational tricks-of-the-trade are invaluable in such a setting as Africa where access to technology is currently very limited.
Working with the team you put together was a wonderful experience. What a fine gathering of teachers! Fun, thoughtful, thought-provoking.
Yunus, thanks a million.
Mark