Berg Reflection for TWBSA – 2009

The trip with TWB-SA was particularly meaningful for me this year, both on a personal level and professionally.

Having traveled throughout South Africa for legislative purposes in 2007 and then becoming part of the 2008 TWB-SA Hawaii team, I was excited to have the opportunity to reacquaint myself again with my South African colleagues and friends. This year, however, I personally experienced even more appreciation for the relationships that were strengthened, the collegial feelings that we shared, and the collective vision of the civic mission of schools to which we committed.

Perhaps it was my familiarity with the people and customs of South Africa that enabled me to feel so relaxed and ‘at home.’ Instead of traveling to three different locations to facilitate our workshops, we were based this year in Mthatha, Eastern Cape, and colleagues from 16 different provinces came to the teacher training center at TRINSET to be with us. It was certainly more convenient for our team members to be able to settle into their rooms and therefore have more time to spend preparing and collaborating with one another for the sessions.

Maybe it was the confidence I felt in the curricular content of the leadership sessions that contributed to my freedom and boldness to speak more deliberately with school administrators. Through a truly open, trusting exchange of ideas, we laughed, teared, struggled through concepts, and practiced communication skills that left us both feeling more empowered as individuals and more challenged as professionals.

Each occasion to be with my educational and governmental counterparts in South Africa, whether in working sessions, sharing meals, interacting and dancing after hours, or participating in their cultural settings, has given me incomparable experiences to develop clearer, more defined perspectives about my “role” in the world. When I returned back to Hawaii THIS year, however, professionally, I had an even more focused view of how I might better serve our State, the communities with whom I engage, and ultimately, how I might contribute to our President’s national agenda, as well.

One of the most significant memories of this year’s trip was attending a wedding in the hills behind Coffee Bay. We traveled in the back of a pick-up truck across dirt roads and through ditches filled with water from the previous weeks of rain. We were the only non-village guests and were so warmly welcomed that one could only feel humbled by the generosity of the wedding party families and grateful for the opportunity that Mr. Fuzile (our host) gave us.

As poor and impoverished as we observed people to be living throughout South Africa, that one experience, alone, began the shift in my thinking about the essential nature of one’s culture, the community’s role in learning, the function of schools, and the incredible responsibilities that rural school administrators and teachers have.

In America, we usually associate rural poverty with apparent absence of economic activity. In the Eastern Cape, as in most places of South Africa, every village has its main shopping street where dozens of tin-roofed sheds jostle one another, pilled high with goods for sale – shoes, rugs, clothing, oranges, foodstuffs, DVD’s, you name it, or offering services from barbering to tailoring. On the back roads, the villagers offer their wares spread out on mats or tables – baskets, hats, dates, rounds of bread, vegetables, carved items. And even in the townships, one sees people working, making, fixing, cooking, or preparing things for trade. These people don’t have “jobs” that conventional economists would recognize. They are “working” hard, though, generating income, trying to feed their families, and making an effort to survive, one day at a time.

The entrepreneurial spirit is even more evident in the school principals and classroom teachers who attended our week-long workshops in Science, Maths, Technology, and Leadership. Just as the citizens of that region lack economic tools to make their work as productive as possible, our educator colleagues lack the benefits of an economic environment to make THEIR work visible. For them, each day poses a challenge, sometimes even a crisis – AND always an opportunity. I believe that they truly relished and delighted in learning WITH us during their week’s stay, as well as appreciated a break from their daily routines and expectations.

It was particularly impactful for me, during this past trip, to recognize the similarities between the operational conditions of Eastern Cape rural schools and the functioning of many of our rural schools in Hawaii. The impact of Western education and expectations on an indigenous culture with a history of oppression and occupation is more easily recognized in South Africa, but certainly not less felt in some areas of Hawaii. What is particularly intriguing and mystifying is that these educator colleagues don’t wait for their resources to materialize in order to keep their schools going, teachers teaching, and youth receiving instruction. The lack of relevant preparation for South African administrators to authentically connect with their staffs and communities, accompanied by their openness and willingness to grow and learn, defies adequate acknowledgement.

The basic premise of my seminars in South Africa is that leadership can be transforming and transformative. The ability to interact and build relationships through communication that facilitates another’s growth is the key to motivating and inspiring others to be their very best. And because we know that the teacher is the single most influential component in a classroom, the administrator’s role is critical in enabling that teacher to be the very best possible influence on the children.

It’s been said that true power lies in caring about others. I feel so blessed to have been able to share this past TWBSA summer seminar with some of the most dedicated, committed, and caring school administrators with whom I have ever had the honor of working. Their persistence, creativity, courage, and humility in the face of incomprehensible odds is not only admirable, it is also professionally energizing.

Together we learned and grew. We debated and discussed what it takes to remain committed to fulfilling our responsibility as educational leaders in order to address the civic mission of schools and how to create places of learning where no hope of change seems to exist. We interacted and laughed at our humanness. We marveled at the effort it will take to keep positive and striving and alert to the opportunities to inspire others to be their best. We sang praises for the blessings that we have and for the hope of a better future for our children, staffs, families, and nations.

Spending time in a country such as South Africa is uplifting, and at the same time, emotionally exhausting. The beauty of the landscape takes one’s breath away, as can the realization of peoples’ living conditions and the daily challenges that they face. Working with colleagues toward the same vision of creating a civil society is reassuring, hopeful, and extremely gratifying for me as an educator, former public school administrator, and currently as an elected official in our State Legislature.

I am deeply grateful to Yunus Peer’s vision and commitment to be of service to his country, as I have been a recipient, like all TWB-SA (and TWB-China) team members, of his creativity and his family’s generosity. I will be eternally indebted for including me in evolving the TWB-SA program, and I look forward to being part of the TWB-SA team again!