Reading! - Pendla Primary School

As I mentioned in an earlier post, our students volunteer two days a week, in addition to going to school full time.   It's time to update you on each of our service sites.

Bobby and Danika were the handiest
with the pick-axe!

I'll start with Pendla Primary School.  Twelve of our students volunteer at Pendla, a school in New Brighton township.  While the houses right around Pendla look fairly good, the learners at the school come from some of the poorest shack areas.  Our students did recent home visits with two of the teachers, and came back shell-shocked by what they saw.  It gave them a new appreciation of what the learners' lives are like outside of the classroom.  As just one example, most of the homes have no running water.

Mark - on his "vacation"

Our students primarily help out in the classrooms at Pendla.  But, they wanted to do more.  Led with great energy and enthusiasm by Ryan Fuchs and Mary Baumgard, they undertook a project to support learner and teacher use of the library that is on site.  

The week before we left for Cape Town, the Pendla group (with help from people from other sites and Jim and his brother Mark) constructed a reading area between the library and the office building.  They did hard labor for three days straight while Pendla was on school break.  They took broken school desks that had been piled on the library's roof, cut off the desk portion with hack saws, sanded everything, primed and painted the metal parts and then stained and varnished the bench seats that remained.   They dug holes with pick-axes, stabilized the benches in place with old cement blocks,  and then covered it all up with dirt.  They finished it off by moving several tons of rock by shovel and wheelbarrow to cover the area.  

First reading class held outside

 It looks fantastic!  On Tuesday after Easter, Jim went out early to see the reactions.  A few learners were already there, just standing and looking at it.  Jim invited them to go in, and two boys got big grins on their faces and raced to sit on the benches.  Soon, most of the benches were full.  Then the teachers came and were shocked and amazed.  They oohed and aahed.  The bell rang at 8:00 a.m. for class, and by 8:15 a teacher had her entire class out there on the benches doing their group reading!   

At recess, learners were crowded around our students who were reading books from the library.   (You should know that there is no place to sit down outside the school room, other than on dirt or cement.)

The kids were all smiles!

Ryan Fuchs spearheaded the effort!
Here he is reading Green Eggs and Ham

As Beth said in an email exchange:  "There are so many discussions in education about providing a place for learning that is respectful and beautiful.  I truly believe that when teachers and learners are in environments that are respectful of them and their ability to learn, they rise to the occasion.  This simple, or somewhat simple, example proved that thinking within 15 minutes!.... just beautiful."