It’s the digital age, and children start using computers, cellphones and other digital devices from a young age. As a result, children literally have the internet at their fingertips. It is a rich resource for school projects and assignments, and it’s the simplest method of finding information fast, but the internet also presents a number of dangers for young users. The advent of social networking allows children to communicate with anybody and share information that might put them at risk.

Protecting children against these risks can prove challenging. Parents and educators should familiarise themselves with the internet, and specifically the different types of social networking platforms available in order to better understand the inherent dangers of each.

Facebook – an online collaboration platform that allows users to post public comments, send private messages, upload photos, and join interest groups. A common risk associated with the use of Facebook is phishing, which occurs when a person or organisation uses someone’s login details to gain access to that person’s account with the intention of obtaining personal information and even bank details from the affected person and his or her friends. The attacker can impersonate the user, sending friends messages that appear to originate from the user, and can also abuse friends’ trust to convince them to follow a link, install a malicious program, or to log in to a Phishing site themselves.

Twitter – a micro-blogging site that lets users post short messages known as “tweets”. Users can update their personal status or “tweet” messages to any other Twitter account. This means that users can send personal messages to celebrities, friends, or complete strangers. Cyber-bullying has become a serious problem amongst Twitter users, in that bullies can target the victim with hurtful messages and can spread malicious rumours to anyone in the victim’s social circle at the touch of a button. This can be emotionally harmful to a child. One of the problems is that it often goes unnoticed by parents, especially if the parents are not Twitter users themselves.

Skype – a program that allows users to engage in real-time text-based conversations, make free phone calls, and video calls to other users, over a contact-to-contact network. Skype has become a preferred method for many sexual predators to find their victims.

Live chat – there are numerous online chat rooms in which users can start a text-based conversation with anyone who is using the chat room at the same time. Sexual predators can pretend to be children or teenagers, using child-like screen names and false photographs, with the intention of gaining the trust of the other users in the chat room. Predators then befriend children and try to encourage the child to agree to a face-to-face meeting.

Although there is no guaranteed way of ensuring that children do not fall prey to these online dangers, there are a number of preventative measures that can be taken. The first step for parents is to ensure that the home computer and the child’s cell phone have the appropriate safety features and blocks installed. This can be requested from the relevant service providers when purchasing the product.

We are seeing more and more children specialise in one or more sport at earlier and earlier ages.

The myth is that to become a successful sportsman or woman, you need to specialise at an early age. The professionalisation of sport over the past few decades has resulted in many parents believing that their child can earn millions if they invest in the development of their child’s talent at an early age.

The reality is that a very small percentage of individuals are able to earn a decent living from professional sport. There are only 15 Springboks on the field at any one time, compared to the number of schoolboy players. Despite all its advantages, Michaelhouse took over 100 years to produce its first Springbok player in 2010. Money aside, many individuals derive their sense of achievement merely from representing their school, club, province or country, but to get there takes years of hard work, sacrifice and dedication.

In fact, authors Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers) and Daniel Coyle (The Talent Code) suggest it takes 10 000 hours or 10 years. That would indicate that, if your child specialises at the age of 10, they will reach their peak at 20 years of age – and from a physiological, mental, cognitive and emotional perspective, that is not their peak performance time. In the majority of sports, mid to late twenties is considered the peak performance period.

When to focus on a specific sport?

So what is the best age to specialise in a specific sport? It is a difficult question, but let’s consider some of the issues. Children need to develop as athletes before they become specialised as players. This can be achieved by teaching them the fundamental skills required as a foundation for more complex physical activities and sports. These basic skills form the basis of ‘physical literacy’, which permit a child to move confidently and with control in a wide range of physical activities and sports. Children can then partake in sport without fear of failure and the likelihood of them beginning a new sport or continuing with one will increase, leading to an active, healthy life.

In addition, having good fundamental skills provides the basis from which sporting excellence can grow. Only once the basic athletic skills have been mastered through sustained, disciplined and deliberate practice, can an athlete begin to specialise in sport-specific techniques and skills. Physical literacy should be developed prior to the onset of the adolescent growth spurt. Fundamental skills include the ‘ABCs’ of athleticism (agility, balance and coordination), of athletics (running, jumping, wheeling/rotation and throwing), as well as swimming, sliding/skating, sending and receiving an object, dribbling, and striking and rhythmic skills. Different sports and activities are better at developing one or more of the ‘ABC’ sets than others.

Some early, some late

Sports can be classified as either early or late specialisation sports. Early specialisation sports include gymnastics, diving and figure skating, whilst late specialisation sports are games such as soccer, rugby, basketball, hockey and cricket. The former group derives its classification because the complex skills required for them need to be mastered before puberty, because flexibility decreases after this stage.

With regard to late specialisation sports, the levels required for international competition can still be achieved if specialisation takes place between 12 and 15 years of age, as long as physical literacy has been achieved before adolescence. As a coach, it is important to make sure that children in your care are not being pushed too hard too early to specialise. Consider whether or not the children you train are early or late developers in order to determine the best time of specialisation for optimal success for each sporting code.

Some guidelines for healthy sporting development

• Boys, aged six to nine and girls aged six to eight should participate in a wide variety of activities to develop the basic skills of agility, balance, coordination and rhythmic movement. The activities should be land- and water-based and, where possible should include ice/snow. There should be no specialisation in a single sport.
• Ages eight to eleven in girls and nine to twelve in boys (i.e. the approximate onset of the growth spurt) are the important age stages for developing sport specific skills, but by playing at least two to three sports in different seasons. Schools should discourage focusing on only one sport throughout the year. Children should also not specialise in one specific position, stroke or technique; for example, batting or bowling in cricket.
• Between ages 11 and 15 in girls and 12 and 16 in boys (i.e. the onset and end of the growth spurt), adolescents are ready to consolidate their sport-specific skills and begin to specialise in a single sport.

Watch out for these challenges

There are a number of challenges that athletes face should specialisation in late specialisation sports commence prior to age 10:

• physical and psychological burnout
• one-sided sport-specific preparation
• loss of diverse social contact
• loss of transferable athletic skills
• greater risk of overuse and repetitive stress injuries
• higher levels of pre-competition anxiety, which can lead to emotional trauma
• difficulty with coping with athletic failure if success is experienced at too early an age

Should your pupils insist on specialising early, or where early specialisation sports are concerned, here are some tips for reducing injury or burnout:

• focus on improving overall performance and developing new skills, not on winning
• make sure your students use proper training techniques
• avoid over-training • keep a sharp lookout for overuse injuries
• never tell your students to “play through the pain”
• let your students choose a sport and a level of participation before you ask for commitment
• make sure your students take an ‘off season’ to avoid burnout

Let’s grow all-rounders Says Jennifer Van Sickle, Assistant Professor of Sport Management at the University of Indianapolis: “Participating in a variety of sports will help a child develop other athletic skills that they would not develop if they specialised in one sport too early.

Athletic skills such as speed, balance, mental focus, jumping and reacting are all stressed differently in different sports. These skills will later transfer to the child’s primary activity, so everything a child does to become a better all-round athlete will make the child a better soccer player, for instance.”

Let your students explore a variety of different physical activities and sports so that they can develop the necessary skills to sustain a long-term sporting life, either as a participant or a competitive athlete. Support them in their development and ultimate choice of a sport.

Mary Ann Dove has an Honours degree in Sports Science from the University of Cape Town, as well as a certif icate in coaching and Psychology. She currently runs Performing 4 Success, which specialises in developing individuals and teams to achieve sustainable performance goals in business and sport. She is also the Co-founder of Positive Sport Parent (www.positivesportparent.com), which provides parents with authoritative information that enables them to inspire and encourage their children’s sporting participation.

References:

Coyle, D. (2010) The Talent Code. London: Random House.

Dieffenbach, K., Gould, D.K. and Moffett, A. (2001) ‘The

Development of Psychological Talent in U.S. Olympic Champions’.

University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Available at:

http://www.educ.msu.edu/ysi/articles/USOCTalent

Development.pdf

Dieffenbach, K., Gould and D., Moffett, A. (2006) ‘The Coach’s Role

in Developing Champions’. University of North Carolina,

Greensboro. Available at:

http://bowlingknowledge.info/index2.php?option =com_content&

do_pdf=1&id=27

Fraser-Thomas, J. Keeping Teens in Sport: What Do We Know and What

Should We Do? School of Kinesiology and Health Science, York

University.

Gibson, B. Performance Implications of Physical and Mental Growth of

the Young Athlete. Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia.

Coaches’ Information Service.

Gladwell, M. (2008) Outliers. USA: Little, Brown and Company.

Hemery, D. (1986) In Pursuit of Sporting Excellence. A Study of Sport’s

Highest Achievers. London: Willow Books.

Longterm Athlete Development. Available at:

http://www.canadiansportforlife.ca/resources

Thompson, J. (2003) The Double Goal Coach. New York: Harper

Collins.

Van Sickle, J. (2006) ‘Early Sport Specialisation, Not a Good Idea’.

Medical News Today.

Consider how many years it’s taken for your school to build its impressive reputation.

Now consider that in an online age, coverage of a crisis on campus – in the form of a photo, a video, a blog post, an e-mail or a news byte can be transmitted around the globe in six seconds. A crisis could take various shapes: an issue known to those at school but not yet made public (students caught with drugs, for example), a scandal that you’re the last to discover (inappropriate behaviour), or an unpredictable occurrence (an accident or act of violence).

Put in place a PR package

When something untoward happens – and odds are that it will, at some point – the key to survival is a public relations package that’s been prepared ahead of time. You should ensure the following:

• Solid relationships with community leaders, as well as with a preferred – and therefore trusted – reporter. Celebrate your triumphs via these conduits, so that when a crisis hits, they’ll be more sympathetic because they know you.
• Established, tested, flexible and adaptable protocols for communicating both with the media and with parents and board members.
• A trained, properly briefed and appropriate team to represent the school when necessary.
• An ongoing – but centralised (i.e. from the Principal’s office), carefully controlled and coordinated – flow of reliable information to be passed onto the media.
• A way to track and respond timeously to rumours and gossip.
• Regular sessions where the whole school learns about – and rehearses – the crisis control plan.

Put yourself in their place

Newspapers are often accused of a salacious attitude to reporting the news. But while you’re putting together your PR plans, put yourself in the media’s place. They have a job to do. When a crisis hits, they’ll claim the public’s right to know – disaster’s what drives them.

More importantly, left to their own devices (think of that perilous statement “No comment”), the medial will flock to the scene, compile their own sources and resources, and publish whichever photographs will create the most impact. Remember they’re competing with other papers, magazines and stations, so being first, or having the most powerful angle, is what they’re after.

Get the media on your side

It may feel like the least important thing on your list, but in the madness that makes up a full-blown crisis, you need to get the media on your side. You may need them to assist with a search, for example, or to publish an appeal, a proclamation or a promise. To gain their support, you may want to use this simple, general plan:

• Whatever you’re planning to tell the media, make sure you tell parents, students, staff and governors first. Decide how you’re going to deal with the fact that the press will undoubtedly attempt to solicit separate interviews from these stakeholder groups.
• Be proactive. Proffer a short, accurate press release as soon as possible. Rule out speculation, stick to the facts and correct inaccuracies immediately. Your biggest potential enemy is confusion.
• Be consistent: provide ongoing updates on a need-toknow basis.
• Get the best advice on when to use which media to keep the public informed. It may depend on what kind of crisis you’re dealing with. Radio is often underused: drive-time chat shows may offer you access to a large audience. Facebook and Twitter may reach millions, but could also invite the rumour-mongers. Your school website may be the best place to post updates, so make sure it’s looking good and working properly. On the other hand, SMS facilities may be the best way to issue updates to your community without jamming phone lines.

Put a personal face to crisis response

It’s always best to put a personal face to a crisis response, and that face should really belong to the Principal. These PR tactics may ease the pain:

• Consider what overall message is going to emerge from the crisis once it’s over. You want the media to see a school community united under strong and decisive leadership.
• Decide whether it’s best to speak individually to reporters as they appear, or to address a press conference.
• Remember it’s permissible to issue a preliminary statement to the effect that you need time to collect information – as long as you include mention of when you’ll disclose that information.
• If public speaking puts you off, do some preparation. Watch TV interviews to learn what and what not to do.
• In a crisis, treat everything as though ‘it’s on the record’. If you don’t want it repeated, don’t say it. The press can smell a cover-up.
• Don’t be sarcastic or lose your temper. Don’t patronise reporters, but don’t allow them to push you around.
• Do not release information that breaks the law; identifies an injured or deceased person before the next of kin are notified, or before the information is released by the police; jeopardises a person’s health or safety; or reflects on a person’s character, reputation, innocence or guilt.
• Keep your answers simple. Stick to the known, and don’t embellish.
• Avoid negatives. Create a future-oriented picture predicated on positivity.
• Don’t avoid the questions, but take time to answer. Think first before speaking.
• Tell the truth. If you don’t know the answer, say so. If you do not have the requested information, ascertain the reporter’s deadline and offer to get back to him or her by that time with a response.
• Don’t be afraid of silence. Don’t feel you have to fill a conversation gap. It’s not a cocktail party.
• Call on your allies. At a time when the school leadership may be called into question, you need a show of support from community leaders, education-related professionals and parents.

Evaluate and re-establish your position

When the media glare fades, spend time evaluating your media crisis plan. Then work on re-establishing your position. Get all the good news about your school out there to a variety of media. Get out into the community and talk face-to-face to people, and see where your school can offer assistance to community projects. Take part in local events. Schedule an open day so that outsiders can celebrate your triumphs with you, and can experience your school first-hand. It’s widely agreed that openness and prudent responsiveness during a crisis can enhance a school’s respect and credibility with the media – and the public – and can in fact help boost an already-solid reputation.

References:

Clawson, S.K. (2011) ‘Crisis Communication Plan: A PR Blueprint’.

Available at: http://www3.niu.edu/newsplace/crisis.html

‘Crisis Management Workbook: Fairfax County Public Schools’.

(2011) Available at: http://www.fcps.edu/fts/safetysecurity/

publications/cmw.pdf

Grebot, M. ‘Managing a Crisis as well as a Reputation’. Available at:

http://www.school-enterprise.com/strategic/marketing/crisis.html

‘Managing a Crisis’. Available at:

http://guide.saferoutesinfo.org/media/managing_crisis.cfm

‘School Crisis Communications’. Available at:

http://www.videojug.com/interview/school-crisis-communications-2

Trump, K. (2009) ‘Communicating Safety’, American School Board

Journal. Available at:

http://www.schoolsecurity.org/training/Communicating-Safety.pdf

‘Upper Grand District School Board: Media Protocol: Crisis

Communication’. Available at:

http://www.ugdsb.on.ca/policies/Protocol%20-

Media%20Crisis%20Communication.pdf

Vining, L. (2011) ‘Managing the Media during a Crisis at School’

Available at: www.marketingschools.net

One of the greatest challenges a Head faces is ensuring that all his or her children’s needs are catered for, from the group too easily labelled ‘special needs’ to those often called ‘gifted’.

Both of these groups are ‘hot potatoes’ and a Head spends a good deal of time in conversation with parents whose children potentially fit into either category. Most parents have an intrinsic fear that their children will be labelled ‘special needs’. On the other hand, a parent very easily believes and is often convinced that their child is gifted in some way; that they have some special or superior talent.

All children have special needs

I would like to offer a third option or explanation. I believe that at some stage in their schooling, every child has a ‘special need’. To my mind, children who have remedial needs and children who need to be extended or challenged should all be viewed as children who have special needs. Virtually every school I have visited manages one end of this spectrum well, but not the other. Some schools have great support departments that cater for children with remedial needs, with occupational therapists, physiotherapists, speech therapists, and counsellors and remedial support staff on campus. Other schools have brilliant enrichment programmes and talk freely about Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment and James Anderson’s Habits of Mind, focusing on stretching those children considered to be specially talented. But all schools need to do both really well. We must all find the balance.

A child must not be labelled Schools that specifically cater for children with special needs may feel they risk being labelled remedial schools, potentially scaring away prospective parents. They may develop the reputation of ignoring the needs of the ‘normal’ child. On the other hand, I have heard often from parents that they have been told upon enquiry by certain schools, “Sorry, we don’t do special needs.” In either case, it frequently transpires that a child needs only a brief therapeutic intervention from a specialist and a little understanding and care from the teacher.

However, it is often extremely difficult to convince a parent that their child needs some kind of therapeutic intervention or even an assessment. Many initially refuse to believe that their child needs help. “I struggled at school and I turned out fine” is a phrase I have heard far too often. It is our responsibility as leaders and professionals to guide a parent through the often traumatising experience of discovering that their child needs assistance, and then convincing them to consult the correct professional to remedy the problem.

Put the right systems in place

Working with and providing support for children who experience barriers to learning is a challenge in itself. At St George’s Grammar School, we have come up with systems to ensure that children receive the best and most appropriate support, and that teachers stay informed about a child’s needs and learning style. We have a very wise and experienced Support Coordinator, Linda van Duuren, who works closely with our staff. Teachers do a termly checklist of needs, strengths and challenges, which then feeds into the report system. We do an annual audit of needs for every child, highlighting various aspects of a child’s educational profile – from reading and Maths proficiencies to physical and emotional health. We track children via a ‘Care List’ to enable us to identify who requires a higher level of care or may be experiencing a time of crisis. Our weekly meetings are invaluable in keeping tabs on children who need immediate, high-level care.

What does ‘gifted’ really mean?

At the other end of the spectrum, many parents are quick to believe their child is gifted. This term, in my opinion, is far too easily bandied about. I am often challenged by prospective new parents as to how we extend and challenge children deemed extraordinarily bright. I have found myself in tricky conversations with parents convinced their child shouldn’t be required to comply with the more mundane aspects of the curriculum such as spelling or tables and bonds, since that ‘bores’ them. Heaven forbid that a ‘gifted’ child should fail a spelling test because he was too bored to learn. Naturally, I exaggerate. Most parents have common sense when it comes to their children’s learning and what a school requires from a child for that child to progress to the next grade.

Introducing a meaningful enrichment programme

Introducing a meaningful enrichment programme at a school is not an easy matter. Fundamental issues of ‘selection’ can cause Heads and their teachers a headache. I try to operate from the premise that not only does every child have a ‘special need’ at some stage of their schooling, but every child deserves to be enriched, regardless of their needs.

Therefore, the design of an enrichment programme needs to be very carefully tailored. The programme approaches enrichment and support as part of the same dynamic; catering for ‘out-of-the-box’ thinkers as well as extremely hard-working children who perform well academically but who do not present as necessarily ‘gifted’. We also try to cater for children who require intensive remedial support. I present a topic to my teachers, who then decide which children will most enjoy and benefit from that specific topic. The children are then sent to me personally for an hour each week to explore issues like movie genres, bridge design, ‘green’ architecture, mythical beasts, global financial markets and Renaissance art.

Whilst I am busy with enrichment, the rest of the grade is divided up into groups to enjoy Maths support, language support, Maths extension, creative writing and ‘out-of-thebox’ enrichment. This helps to alleviate issues and anxieties around elitism and selection criteria. I cannot speak for the other teachers, but those periods are my favourite time of the week.

Let’s talk to each other

I would like to know how many schools – both public and independent – manage to strike the balance between satisfying both remedial and gifted needs. If they are candid, how many Heads face similar fears of their schools being labelled remedial? How many of us use the more PC term ‘specially abled’ to describe both their ‘struggling’ children as well as their ‘flying’ children? Let’s start the conversation.

Dave Bester is the Preparatory School Principal at St George’s Grammar School, Mowbray, Cape Town.

How are you? Unjani? O jwang?

If you’re feeling unloved, uninspired, ignored or just plain fed up, try greeting in an African language. Your world will light up, sparks will fly, it will be, quite simply, ama-zing!

Why? Well, it’s because, first of all, in African culture, that simple question, “How are you?” is asked with meaning, and the asker has time – I think it was the Arch1 who said, “God gave whites watches and Africans time” – to actually hear your reply and mind about it.

He or she really really, really wants to know how you are. But even if it’s a quickie – a “Howzit, my bru?” kind of greeting – in an African language, it is still fun, fulsome and, like, cool dude. So let’s relax in our slacks, chill, phola and take the time to greet and even get going with harmonising our hows, repeating sounds like – just listen to the repetition – Zithini ezintsha? (What’s new? Whassup?)

Taking time – the rural

“How are you?” Once, walking in the mountains of Lesotho, I came across a woman who seemed to be carrying a whole house on her head – honestly, there was a door, a window frame, the roof even – but when I called out a greeting to her – “Kgotso, mme, o phela jwang?” (Literally: Peace, ma’am, how are you living?) she stopped, rocked a little to balance the residence on her cranium, and replied graciously, showing real interest in me, “Ke teng. Wena o kae?” (I am here. And you, where are you?) There is something so beautiful about that soft, melodious question, O kae? Where are you? In your life? In your mind? Maybe… in your heart? Say it again, this time softly, with love and affection, as if delicately balancing the friendship of the whole world on your head: O (you) kae (where)? Another beauteous thing about O kae? is that it is a generic Sotho question – it works in Pedi, Sotho and Tswana (pronounced oo-kah-ee).

Howzit, my bru?

In the townships, if you’re a dude, it’s all about being cool. Cooler than the coolest beer from the coolest fridge in the coolest shebeen. And being cool means you don’t rush. So the quick “Howzit, my bru?” gets a full makeover when rendered in township slang. Check – you take the twosyllable How-zit? and you make it three syllables, just for rhythm, for style.

Heyta! Wuzethi? (Hi! Howzit?)

Moja, bra! (Cool, dude!)

Moja, moja, s’khokho. (Cool, cool, gangster.)

That’s what happens in the township: you go all modern, then you find a legend of a word, like ukhokho (ancestor), and you change its prefix so that its meaning changes entirely too – s’khokho (gangster/tough guy) – and it works! It’s cool.

Harmonious hows!

What’s also super cool is seeing how much harmony (literally) African languages create, by repeating sounds found in the noun. So in Sotho you will have Se jwang Sesotho? How is Sotho? Bo jwang bophelo? How is the health? In Nguni languages, the same questions are translated as Sinjani isiSuthu? Injani impilo?

The Zulus have the last say

When things are not going well, English and Afrikaans speakers kind of shrug disconsolately and might say something like, “Things are a bit tough hey, a bit tough.” But a Zulu speaker has this gem of an expression as a way of indicating that life is not as good as it could be: they say Sisabacasula abasizondayo (We still nauseate those who hate us).

You see, you can’t deny it. Greetings in African languages are deeper, cooler and, well, yes, more meaningful. Try them out, something momentous might happen!

Tessa Dowling is Adjunct Professor, African Languages section, School of Languages and Literatures at the University of Cape Town. In this series, she explores the richness of our various African languages. Dowling is the founder of African Voices – a collection of multimedia, print and audio materials for those wishing to learn a South African language. A full list of materials – with details of how to order can be found on the website www.africanvoices.co.za

“It’s like thinking about your thinking,” said Liam (Grade 7), in a moment of realisation that he was thinking matacognitively. This was a giant leap for him . . . and I knew then that we were beginning to see real thinking taking place in our school.

How do we prepare our children adequately for the jobs of the future? Dr Tony Wagner, Co-Director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has distilled the thoughts of many experts in addressing this dilemma.

He contends that the critical survival skills for careers, learning and citizenship are:

• critical thinking and problem-solving
• collaboration: accessing networks and leading by influence
• agility and adaptability
• initiative and entrepreneurship
• effective communication
• analysing information
• curiosity and imagination

Teachers equipped with tools St Peter’s College believes that good thinking is a critical common component of all the above skills. Ever since Edward de Bono visited St Peter’s College in 1999, Thinking Skills have been part of the curriculum, with a weekly lesson dedicated to the subject area.

Many of our teachers have been trained in a variety of tools or programmes, from De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats to Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment. These tools have enabled our students to develop their ability to think more effectively. January 2011 saw St Peter’s relaunch our Thinking Skills curriculum. All staff members were tasked with applying De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats and Dr Toni Noble’s HITS and HOTS more consistently. My invitation to present at the International Association of Cognitive Education in South Africa (IACESA) Conference in Cape Town in February was a great privilege.

Speakers from around the globe inspired all delegates to take the whole-school approach. The message was: there must be a thinking language in effective schools that everyone, regardless of grade, subject or post, can understand and use effectively. While in Cape Town, I had the opportunity to train to become a coach using David Hyerle’s Thinking Maps system. Following the conference, I was tasked with passing on this knowledge to my colleagues back at school. Thinking represented visually As I write, our pupils are using these maps as a means of visually representing their thinking. As you walk around St Peter’s, you will hear, “Put on your green hat” or “Which map would help you to think about this?”, “I think he was wearing his yellow hat”, “I think I should use the double-bubble map to compare and contrast…” Our students and teachers are developing a language for thinking.

The IACESA Conference also saw the birth of Thinking Schools South Africa (TSSA) in partnership with Thinking Schools International (TSI). St Peter’s hosted TSSA’s first Thinking Skills Coordinators’ Training Course. Twelve delegates were taken through the TSI guide for developing a Thinking School. This will enable us to work towards the Thinking Schools Accreditation, offered by the University of Exeter in the UK. In July, a colleague and I were able to attend the National Thinking Schools Conference in the UK.

Many of the workshops were conducted by accredited Thinking Schools educators, who shared examples and ideas of how to use Thinking Tools to enable children to become independent thinkers and learners. We visited two accredited schools where children were able to articulate their thinking; metacognition was evident and we were visibly impressed. As members of the Thinking Schools Network, St Peter’s has ongoing access to these schools and those who are working towards accreditation. Sharing ideas and good practice enables us to provide the best thinking-based education we can. Thinking Skills are one of the most important areas of the curriculum, yet they are inadequately implemented. St Peter’s aspires to developing a new generation of thinkers.

Katy Mthethwa is HoD, Thinking Skills, at St Peter’s School, Johannesburg.

References:

www.debonothinkingsystems.com/tools/6hats.htm

www.thinkingskillsuk.org/fiep.htm www.ncab.org.au/Page.aspx?ID=193

www.thinkingfoundation.org/about/hyerle.html

www.thinkingschoolsassociation.com/

www.thinkingschoolsassociation.com/events

What a difference a day makes!

Ashton International College received an e-mail invitation earlier this year to participate in the ‘A Day without Shoes’ outreach initiative. Excited Ashton students arrived at school on the appointed day without their shoes, which they had been invited to donate. Initially the goal was to collect at least 650 pairs of shoes.

The response was overwhelming as all our students from the Ashlings Early Learning Centre (Grade 000-Grade R) to the Matrics took up the challenge and donated sports shoes, smart shoes, sandals, school shoes, slippers and slops. Each class proudly brought their footwear and packed them around the fountain in the Ashton garden.

Circles and circles of shoes – what a display! The shoes were then collected by the North Coast Courier Orphan Fund and St Vincent’s and Shakashead Ministries for distribution to various organisations. “We were extremely proud of our students who so willingly participated in this initiative, contributing to those less fortunate in our community,” said Joe Erasmus, Executive Head of Ashton.

“The generosity of our parent body and the enthusiasm of our students surpassed our expectations as 983 pairs of shoes were collected,” he added. This was not enough! With winter approaching, the Ashlings took the opportunity to put socks onto the feet of children from Siyazana Crèche and Sizani School, and had a ‘Silly Sox’ day. Each child decorated an old pair of socks to wear to school, and donated a new pair of socks to be given away. The new socks were pegged onto a washing line so that we could all see how many we had collected. Reverend Roy Govender of the Umhlali Methodist Church was invited to enjoy a morning of song, and the new socks were then handed over for distribution.  Jeannie Habig is the Marketing Manager at Ashton International College, in Ballito, KwaZulu-Natal.

Tali Nates is passionate about many things – in particular, history as a powerful force for peace, and the ability of young people to craft a new kind of future for the world.

This Director of the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre (JHGC) knows all about the power of the past. “I was born into a family of Holocaust survivors, but despite that – or maybe because of that – I grew up with the knowledge that not ‘all Germans were bad’. The knowledge that people have choices and that one cannot generalise about people was empowering. “I also learned the value of remembering the past in order to empower us all to act for the betterment of humanity in the future.”

A brand new centre for Johannesburg

Her personal family history is by no means the only reason why Nates is perfectly placed to head the Johannesburg chapter of the South African Holocaust and Genocide Foundation (SAHGF).

Over the years, she’s worked with various organisations in the fields of holocaust education, genocide prevention, reconciliation and human rights in different parts of world. “SAHGF was established in 2008 to coordinate holocaust and genocide education.

The centres in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg are associated with over 300 organisations and institutions worldwide engaged in holocaust and genocide education and remembrance. They are all members of the Association of Holocaust Organisations.” Nates bubbles over when our conversation turns to the new JHGC, currently under construction. Like other important centres in the city built in the name of history – such as the Apartheid Museum and Museum Africa – it promises to be an impressive architectural landmark, with a memorial garden, resource centre and venues for workshops, public events and temporary exhibitions.

It will also be home to a permanent exhibition focused on the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. “The centre, due to open in 2013, became necessary,” she explains, “because of the new national school curriculum for senior students, which includes a study of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust at both the Grade 9 and Grade 11 levels. The centre will be committed to assisting provincial education departments, schools and educators with the implementation of the human rights curriculum through educator training, learner workshops and resource materials.”

SAHGF works with schools around the country

The absence hitherto of a smart centre doesn’t mean Nates and her team haven’t been significantly involved in human rights education programmes around the country for some time. This year alone, they’ve worked with teachers and students in Joburg, Soweto and Ekurhuleni, as well as Queenstown in the Eastern Cape and Tonga in Mpumalanga.

“As part of our ongoing work with the Department of Basic Education to empower History teachers, we held the fourth round of Educators’ Workshops, entitled ‘Understanding Apartheid and the Holocaust – Teaching and Learning, the Grade 9 Experience’,” details Nates. “Our educators’ workshops all over the country offer resources like student and teacher workbooks, DVDs and handouts, using experiential activities to learn about the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide.”

The JHGC is also involved with the Peermont Schools Support Programme (PSSP). This long-term initiative of the Peermont Group provides both financial support and resources to seven schools in Gauteng. The centre also offers all schools the opportunity to host a visiting exhibition or guest lecturers from around the world. “This year, US-based Theresienstadt Holocaust survivor Ela Weissberger shared her testimony and life lessons with the students of Mcauley House School, for example,” remembers Nates. And in July, in partnership with the Liliesleaf Trust and the United Nations Information Centre (UNIC), the JHGC hosted the exhibition ‘Lessons from Rwanda’ at Liliesleaf Museum. The exhibition presents an account of the events that took place before, during and after the genocide in Rwanda, to raise awareness of the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the lasting impact of genocide on survivors.

How to tackle the issue of injustice

I’m moved again by Nates’ passion when she suggests a way for teachers to tackle the issue of genocide in the classroom. “Consider this,” she says simply. “In April 1994, as South Africans celebrated their freedom from apartheid and people stood proudly in queues for hours to vote; only a mere threeand- a-half hours airplane flight away, on the same continent and in the same time zone in Rwanda, hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and some politically moderate Hutus were murdered in a period of three months.

Yet most South Africans don’t make the connection. “We suggest that teachers link the Holocaust and the genocide in Rwanda with the consequences of prejudice, racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia and the dangers of indifference, apathy and silence. Teaching the Holocaust as a case study of human rights abuse serves as an excellent entry point for both teachers and students; this history is removed from the local experience of apartheid as it happened in another country more than 65 years ago and is less emotionally charged for South Africans.”

Whilst a great deal of attention is focused on the Rwandan genocide and the Holocaust of World War II, Nates urges South African teachers to include current events on our continent in their curricula. “They can conduct with their students a ‘human rights barometer’ of Africa by studying countries like Sudan, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Libya, to name a few. Don’t just wait for calendar dates like the International Day of Peace to pay lip service to the atrocities happening all around us.” Schools without access to slick technology and other resources should not worry.

“South Africa has a great oral tradition and the opportunity to use story-telling to acquire and share knowledge, values, ethics and morals presents itself naturally,” advises Nates. “Listening and learning from testimonies of survivors of injustice can help learners to look more closely at the issue of choices and connect to the lessons they can learn from this history.

“My hope is always that learners will move from knowing what they ‘should do’, to actually doing it. “Understanding the role of bystanders and choosing to take action is extremely important, especially in a young democracy such as South Africa dealing with serious problems like xenophobia.”

The young are up to the challenge

Nates fervently believes that the young people in whom our future hopes are vested are up to the challenge. She cites the impact of an event held at St Stithians Girls’ College in 2009 to commemorate the Rwandan genocide. The students held a fundraising drive to assist Rwandan survivor Xavier Ngabo to return to Rwanda and find the remains of his parents, who were murdered in the genocide, and bury them.

“Young peoples’ immediate world – their ‘universe of obligation’ – needs to be challenged. If you teach them about human rights issues, like the way the Nazis perfected the propaganda technique of ‘otherness’, they will be up there on the barricades fighting for human rights. “I know this, because everywhere I go, I meet inspiring students, like the Grade 9 Redhill School pupil who said after our workshop: ‘I want to teach people about the past, about the horror of the Holocaust, to prevent it from happening again’.”

Contact the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre at tel +27(11) 640 3100/6402148, fax: +27(11) 640 7865 or cell: +27(83) 260 8124, or visit the website at www.holocaust.org.za

By Donna Marucchi

We know that some of them are able to learn these skills, but what is sacrificed when time is spent on these formal pursuits? The Grade 1 teacher will teach these skills in a fraction of the time when the preschool child is delivered to Grade 1 with all the necessary ‘pre-skills’.

While teaching kindergarten in the USA for two years, I taught fourand five-year-olds to read and write. Many of them were unable to reach the expected goal for reading, while others learned to read in ‘rote’ fashion – without comprehension. It was sad to see little hands trying to grip a pencil and form letters when those fingers were not strong enough to do so.

How I longed to spend the time doing creative activities – cutting, tearing, rolling, playing with play dough, drawing and painting with thick brushes and wax crayons to strengthen fingers and develop fine motor skills.

There was simply no time in the school day for these very worthwhile and age-appropriate activities. Their body-image drawings were extremely immature, a sure sign that they were not fully ‘integrated’. No attention was paid to this red flag, and no assessments were carried out to monitor the children’s mastery of basic skills. The foundation was not laid correctly, and cracks were bound to show later in their formal schooling.

Focus rather on age-appropriate activities

If we spend time teaching the preschool child to read and write, we limit indoor and outdoor free-play – building puzzles, playing in the fantasy corner, building cities and towers with the manipulative toys, paging through a story book, running, jumping, crawling, climbing, pouring and measuring at the water troughs, sand-pit play and exploring at the senso-pathic tables. I remember the kids I taught had underdeveloped fine and gross motor skills, their hands would tire as they wrote and they were not able to maintain a correct writing posture for any length of time. More importantly, they were not developing socialisation skills, acquired through free play, to stand them in good stead for the rest of their lives.

Phonics, stories and accidental reading

In Botswana, I worked in a primary school owned by Debswana Diamond Company Ltd. Our mining community was made up of many expatriates, mainly from Britain. Our curriculum focused only on teaching the pre-reading skills. Even though the ‘British’ parents expressed concern that we were not teaching their children to read and write at the age that they would be doing so in England, we received glowing reports of how well they were doing once they returned to their home country.

I experienced the same phenomenon when I headed up a school in Pretoria. Our pupil body comprised the children of parents working in surrounding embassies. We kept in contact with many of these families, and they told us how easily their children fitted back into their peer groups, even if they went from a current Grade R class here to a Grade 1 equivalent class ov erseas. At Thembelisha Preparator y School, our pupils are bright, energetic Swazi children.

We spend a year doing phonics with the very young for 10 minutes a day. By the end of the year the sounds are so entrenched that learning to read will not be a chore or a frightening experience, but an activity children enthusiastically embrace in Grade 1. At the pre-prep, we also instil a love of books and stories in our young students. The preschool classroom is also set up in a way that encourages accidental reading. Names are al ways written on the top lef thand corner and everyday objects are clearly labelled. Children who are ready will begin to make sense of the written word in this way, having already acquired all the necessary pre-skills.

South African students benefit from sensible system

A challenge facing teachers today is the misperception that any child who is able to read and write at a very young age is ‘ highly intelligent ’, and so these skills are actively encouraged and coached at home! So why do children in the UK and USA, and in some other countries, start formal schooling a year sooner than we do? Is there anything to be gained? I truly believe that our southern African children are the privileged ones – they enjoy a full additional year to de velop their pre-skills and build a solid scholastic foundation. Having taught at preschools for 21 years, in four different countries, across different cultures and languages, I am convinced that that the most important task of the preschool is to prepare the child thoroughly to enable them to soar in the capable hands of teachers in the upper grades.

Donna Marucchi is Head of Thembelisha Pre-Preparatory School in Simunye, Swaziland.

By Cathy Fry with Theresa Munks, Margaret Marshall, Dana Altini and Helen Steyn

In preprimary and Grade 0 classrooms across the country, very young children are being introduced to formal schooling.

In the process, they lose out on the important facet of learning through play and the development of perceptual skills that must occur before formal learning can take place.

Occupational therapist at St Andrew’s Junior School, Theresa Munks, believes that young learners need time to explore, investigate, implement and master various foundational gross motor, fine motor, language and perceptual skills before learning to read and write. The skills instrumental in the acquisition of efficient handwriting skills, and which therefore require optimal development themselves, include trunk and shoulder girdle stability, upper-limb dissociation, hand and finger muscle strength, in-hand manipulation, ocular motor control and sensory integration.

Development of these areas and their associated skills may not necessarily be acquired within clearly specified age bands. Moreover, it’s important that children are given sufficient time and exposure to play activities that enable them to discover these abilities and facilitate their development.

In today’s world, children denied opportunities to develop

Unfortunately, today’s lifestyles are not always conducive to such development outside of the school environment. Many children travel great distances to get to school where they spend long days because of the hours of working parents. Many children live in townhouse complexes without large garden spaces for explorative play, and few children have the option of exploring their communities due to safety issues like heavy traffic. Busy working weeks often leave families with little spare time to explore unstructured leisure pursuits that facilitate the development of these skills.

Many younger children are also assisted in their activities of daily living (e.g. dressing, grooming and feeding) instead of learning to execute the tasks themselves. It’s therefore important that these skills be actively facilitated within the school curriculum, and not overlooked in the interests of concentrating on more formal literacy development.

Adults take postural development for granted

Margaret Marshall, neuro-developmental treatment physiotherapist at St Andrews, states that one of the key elements to consider when learning to read and write is postural control, the development of which begins at birth.

Adultlike postural control is achieved at around the age of six-and-a-half years – but since no two children are alike, this age will depend on the interaction of a number of complex systems. Furthermore, it is the culmination of the interaction between the individual, the environment and the task that create the moment when a child is poised to read and write.

Exposure to different positions during self-initiated, goaldirected, purposeful play will help these systems to mature and accommodate to changes in both the environment and the task at hand. An immature postural system will affect the child’s ability to remain in an upright position against gravity for extended periods of time, as is required during both reading and writing.

It is therefore important to make sure that tasks are attainable and that expectations are not so high as to result in the child being discouraged by repeated failure.

Learning to read a complex process

Dana Altini, St Andrews’ speech therapist, believes it’s paramount to help a child acquire a vast background knowledge, strong oral language, phonological decoding and phoneme awareness before introducing them to formal reading.

In contrast to learning to speak, which develops naturally, learning to read is a complex, effortful process that requires active teaching and active learning, across all areas of childhood development. While it’s true that neural plasticity (functional development within the brain) is at its best the younger we are, there is a fairly broad period of critical development for a number of splinter skills to advance to make a successful attempt at learning to read. There are five phases along the continuum of reading development. Each must be cultivated fully to move to phase six in adulthood. Early reading is only phase three, prior to which children need to experience roleplay reading and experimental reading. The cognitive skills required to begin formal reading include: attention, memory, perception, language comprehension and reasoning.

It makes logical sense that each skill needs time and stimulation to develop optimally. A child must also be able to discriminate between similar sounding words and sounds e.g. moon/noon. They should also be able to identify and generate sound patterns in words and be able to hear and manipulate syllables and phonemes in words. A strong linguistic base is necessary for comprehension and anticipation of text. Life experience and early education provide ample opportunity to enrich and extend language. Words and sounds are symbols. Before children can be expected to learn a third set of symbols (letters representing the sounds of language), they should be sufficiently skilled in the symbolism of linguistic representation i.e. language.

Consider metalinguistic awareness

In “Malleable Minds: Environment Shapes Intelligence”, Dr Jane M. Healy1 posits that “before brain regions are myleinated, they do not operate efficiently… trying to ‘make’ children master academic skills for which they do not have the requisite maturation may results in mixed-up patterns of learning.”

Helen Steyn, our remedial therapist, believes that the early stages needed for reading are vital building blocks; including rhyme recognition, syllable blending and syllable segmentation. These skills begin to emerge at the age of four and develop in a progressive manner until the child is six years of age. Another aspect that needs to be developed before reading can take place is metalinguistic awareness, which is made up of knowledge that adults take for granted:

• understanding that letters make up words and that written
• words must be linked together into meaningful sentences
• knowing what a word is – a bunch of squiggles with white
• spaces between
• knowledge that we read from left to right
• knowing the meaning of the terms – and use of visual
• clues, title, cover, author, beginning of word/sentence,
• illustrations

Bring back play! Expectations of children in the school environment are increasing the world over. Parents demand more and more from teachers without understanding that the sand pit, paint and dough, crayons and paper, pegs, beads and building equipment are all vital to the effectiveness of learning in a formal environment.

Reading, writing and ’rithmetic should be easy and fun. Instead of pressurising children into formal learning, give them the time to grow, to play and to develop individually. Give them the time to develop the skills they need to make formal learning a success.

Cathy Fry is Headmistress at St Andrew’s Junior School in Senderwood, Johannesburg.

Reference: 1. See http://education.jhu.edu/newhorizons/future/creating_ the_future/crfut_healy.cfm