South African teachers share literacy expertise

by Sarah R. Buchholz, Chronicle staff

wo enthusiastic teachers from South Africa's Western Cape rural schools traveled to campus in July to exchange ideas about the teaching of writing with some of their Massachusetts colleagues.

    Marjorie Hendricks and Diane Hendricks, who are not related, arrived July 6 to participate in the Western Massachusetts Writing Program. Both teachers are involved in the Management for Learning Project, which assists with development in some South African rural schools.

     The Western Massachusetts Writing Project, one of the 167 sites of the National Writing Project in the continental U.S., provides staff development in and around writing and reading for K-12 teachers.

     "It's different from other staff-development projects because it assumes that the best leaders in staff-development are practicing teachers who are in the classroom," said co-director, English professor Charles Moran. "The writing project values teachers' knowledge, so we chose the 18 participants on the basis of their application about what they do around literacy, teaching reading and writing. The 15-20 trained teacher consultants do a whole range of things [after the program]: workshops for other teachers and they run a student publishing program each year that publishes five volumes of student writing and editing."

     The writing project has been bringing South African teachers to campus for several years. "We are very happy for the opportunity granted by UMass," Diane Hendricks said. "We are learning more about how writing is used in the curriculum here. We do writing across the various areas of the curriculum, but much more value is given to it here.

     "The exercises and activities I will be able to apply in my first language also." A native speaker of Afrikaans, she is also fluent in English. Diane teaches her 48 first graders using Afrikaans.

     Marjorie Hendricks teaches social science, particularly geography, to 6th and 7th graders. She also teaches English as a second language. Her class sizes range from 45 to 47 students.

     With class sizes 50 to 100 percent larger than their Massachusetts counterparts and most students speaking more than one language, Diane and Marjorie face challenges that many commonwealth teachers can only imagine.

     "We are fortunate that in our area we are multilingual, multicultural, muti-everything," Diane said.

     Part of the diversity is in approaches to teaching, Marjorie said.

     "Because our country is so diverse, you won't find what we're doing everywhere," she said. But she does see one consistency: "Teachers, they want to become better."
"They use opportunities, like we are using the opportunity now," said Diane.
"We believe that people can learn from us," said Diane of her presentation at the workshop. They gave other workshop participants an overview of the educational system in South Africa, citing cultural, as well as structural, differences.

     "Our children are not reading," Marjorie said. "We are not a reading nation. It is difficult [even] for the teachers to do the reading. [Also] our children in our schools do not talk; it is part of our culture.

     "Even writing-across-the-curriculum is new. We are doing it at the moment, we just didn't know we were doing it. When we go back, I'll start with what the teachers are already doing. Our job is to go back there and introduce it across the curriculum. From every workshop I've attended, I can take back something." She plans to begin to integrate her new ideas in the reading curriculum, later branching into other areas, she said.

     Marjorie and Diane said they will take back more than just classroom ideas. Initially nervous about a visit to the U.S., they were pleasantly surprised once they arrived in Amherst.

     "The way we've been received here has made a tremendous difference to the way we felt when we got off the plane," said Diane.

     "It's definitely not what we see on TV," said Marjorie.

     "So warm and friendly," said Diane. "We can go back to South Africa and say we found some ambassadors in America."

     "People don't just tell you where the library is, they walk you down to the library," said Marjorie. "It struck me that people are very friendly. That really struck me as unique."

     "So this is a whole learning experience," said Diane, "not just about writing."

     "I hope this is not the end of this cultural exchange," Marjorie said.

     After the Hendricks returned home, the Writing Project sent Diana Callahan, co-director for the Parsons School in Easthampton, and Bonnie Moriarty, teacher consultant and a department head at Cathedral High School in Springfield, both veterans of the July workshop, to the Western Cape.

     "We've learned a lot from the people who came [over the past three years] and we hope we can give something back," Moran said. "We've gained so much from having Marjorie and Diane here."