My original attempts at communicating with international sources went unanswered, but I was able to find a teacher in South Africa through a friend of my daughter's who is in the Peace Corp there. Although she is attending to the subject of HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention, her work involves many families with young children.She provided me with the information and method (What's App messaging) to contact Lindiwe, a teacher of grade R (reception) at Matjeni Primary School in Komatipoort, which is in the region of Mpumalanga. R grade is not mandatory, and the children are about 4 or 5.
The school has a fee which can be waived or reduced if a parent applies for this, but most parents don't even bother to send their children to school in the area she is from. Schools are overcrowded, with more than 30 students per teacher, and most don't make it past 9th grade.
She sees may orphans due to AIDS and HIV, as well as many absences from school.
I will be texting more with her throughout this course, but so far this the most I have gotten due to the time change and communication difficulties, both technological and cultural.
Renee,
ReplyDeleteWow that is amazing! I look forward to reading your future posts. It is so heartbreaking to think how different the United States is in comparison to other parts of the world. I always think to myself-what can I do to help people those people that are suffering. I feel like I complain a lot about having such a huge class size this year. I have 25 kindergarten students with no associate. I can not imagine having over 30 children per teacher! I am sure resources are rare, so those teachers are doing what they can with what they have.
Thanks for sharing!
Siera