Dreams, Davidic inspiration and a school visit to Orange Farm

Prior to my arrival at Lebone II College of the Royal Bafokeng, I had paced myself through the possible activities that I would take part in. The concept of visualising a series of events that would change the course of my life and the lives of others, proved to be significantly challenging. This had never happened to me before. Anticipating a goal or dream in the past had always been effortless because I had managed to surround myself with information that would reinforce my ambitions. It has been said that the significance of ones aspirations is determined by the amount of fear generated by the thought of achieving that goal. The fear generated by my inability to visualise my experience as a teacher put a veil over that statement. I could neither see the advantages or the disadvantages of the art of teaching. I remember, upon my arrival on the campus grounds of Lebone, thinking, “God had better answer my question today” How will my role in this establishment serve a function in the lives of the student I address daily?

I don’t think I was ready for the response that he had for me. Come to think of it, even as I contemplate every other response that followed that one, my reaction hasn’t wavered.  Our Principal presented the staff with a lovely opening speech where he spoke about the complex dynamics between David and Goliath. David, who was seemingly small and out matched by Goliath's stature and sheer magnitude, actually had the upper hand. Not only did he arrive without the armour that anchored Goliath to the ground, but he had been harnessing his speed and accuracy with a sling shot with wild beasts. It was then evident, that though David arrived at the battle field seemingly unarmed, unprepared and inexperienced for the task that was presented before him, the little he had was sufficient enough to help him complete the task.

The weeks that followed our induction into the teaching realm, was an influx of answers for questions I subconsciously asked myself. Not only was my fear alleviated, but my sense of significance was reinforced. I keep telling my co-teacher what a blessing it is to work in an environment where I feel God's presence at every moment. After the privilege of attending the South African Extra Ordinary Schools Coalition meeting in Orange Farm, I was able to see what other schools were doing to make a lasting positive impact on students'  futures on a multi-dimensional level. I have experienced that the Lebone staff make a collective effort to improve the schooling career of their students, by giving them equal opportunities in their academic, sport and cultural activities. Lebone’s ethos that resonates that everyone is equally significant to the next person is a significant part of Lebone’s DNA. The idea that there is no system of hierarchy ensures that when a student leaves the school, they leave with enough knowledge to assist them in overcoming the “Goliaths” of their lives whilst being anchored by good values to carry on developing a healthy sense of self-worth.  

I haven’t quite ironed out all the wrinkles in my fabric as a teacher but I’m quite glad with the work that I have done so far. Each day is a new experience that brings new rewards and challenges that will assist me in mastering this art. 

Being at Lebone has changed my perspective of teaching so much!

Being at Lebone has changed my perspective of teaching so much compared to the level of education I got in my school days. Teachers are committed to providing each student with a high quality holistic education by using an array of innovative learning practises to foster a teaching climate that is self-driven, highly reflective and always thoughtful about the evidence of impact on student learning.

As a student-teacher at Lebone, I regard myself very privileged because here you are given all the tools necessary to make you a great teacher and the technology used, is of great quality. The school is also blessed with the best IT staff that makes communication and facilitation effective. Even the class layout is very different to help group and differentiate amongst students according to their level of understanding.

Lebone is greatly focused on student and teacher development as we attend programmes to enrich us with knowledge of developing new ideas and methods of teaching and learning.  So the long hours spent here are very profitable for people new like myself, as they give you time to interact with colleagues and students and get used to the space and be open to mingle with others. Lebone operates as a research driven school, where high quality learning programmes are developed in line with international best practices.

 Race is not an issue at Lebone as others want to learn languages that are foreign to them. Yes there is a language barrier that others use to denigrate other through distractive slogans and so forth. Students must get used to diverse cultures from an early age, to eliminate misunderstandings and avoid using language as a bullying tool to exclude others as Gerda indicated in her reflection.

The school is academically orientated, with many co-curricular activities to balance. The truth is Lebone has been generously staffed for its student numbers. For the most part, we all have a much lighter teaching load, and an exceptionally light co-curricular load compared to other schools. This means we have more time during the school day for lesson preparations, marking and meetings compared to teachers at other schools, and therefore more time to give to students in other arenas besides academically.

Students are presented with lots of opportunities to prove and show off their talents and gifts. There are sports and cultural programmes for their physical growth. There are also opportunities in their academics for students to shine brightly, like the Eskom Science Expo where two students came up with the idea of making an application to prevent hackers from getting into your accounts. The system at Lebone is rewarding for hard workers so that you do not become reluctant and quit in your efforts of making Lebone a better place.

Furthermore from the teacher-parent meeting observed in the primary school, a question was asked on how do teachers structure a successful parent-teacher interaction? My response would be that you need to communicate and send out the invitation as early as possible. Research has shown that students do better in school when their parents/guardians are involved in their process of learning. Face-to-face contact is the best way to communicate with parents. Parents who attended and saw the video of their kids were overwhelmed and very proud and were given essential tools to help their children at home and developing them to grow.

Second Year B.Ed PUKKE Student-Teacher and Lebone alumnus reflects on the DNA of this space

What impact does a school such as Lebone have on the individual student or staff member?

In the ten days that I have spent at Lebone I have seen both positive and negative aspects of the school. I also have the privilege to have matriculated here and did my first teaching practical here in 2012. Because of my previous experiences here, I think that I have a deeper understanding of the DNA of Lebone than newer individuals would have. I will analyse what impact I think Lebone has on individuals.

Lebone is a private school in Rustenburg, Phokeng and consists of grades R-13. The school follows the IEB curriculum. I think that Lebone has a mostly positive impact on the individuals here and provides opportunities which ordinary schools cannot provide.

Students receive all the needed individual attention. They have special “cc” periods in which they can get help from teachers or complete their homework or tasks. Although the “cc” periods is a good idea in theory, I think that most students do not use the given time correctly. I recommend that teachers be stricter in checking that the students use the time wisely. According to Hayes Mizell, “Good teaching is not an accident. While some teachers are more naturally gifted than others, all effective teaching is the result of study, reflection, practice, and hard work.” Lebone has a special TLC centre where students with learning problems can go. The centre helps these students to gain the needed skills to perform better on their learning level.

Lebone focuses greatly on student and staff development. The staff attend regular meetings where they learn to develop new ideas and methods of teaching. The students go to many activities such as enrichment and the GEAR program which is a program that allow the students to choose between a range of activities such as choir and design which allow them to develop and grow into enlightened young adults. All schools should be places where both teachers and students learn. Most teachers of Lebone who constantly develop their own skills and knowledge create an example for students and show them that learning is important and useful. Their constant development creates an example of learning all throughout the school. It also supports the teacher’s efforts to engage students in learning.  A school such as Lebone that organises team-based professional development and expects all teachers and students to regularly participate- for different purposes, at different times and in different ways- enforces us that it is serious about all individuals performing at higher levels. As a result, the entire school is more focused and effective.

Lebone has many school values such as integrity and trust by which the students as well as the staff are encouraged to live by. These values guide the individuals of Lebone to live a better life. Through my experiences I know that all new individuals attend a candle lighting ceremony which is a symbolic activity symbolising their acceptance into the Lebone family. Truth bracelets are also given to all new individuals to remind them that truth is an underlying commitment by which they must live by. Even though Lebone has great school values, not everyone lives by it. I think that the tutor periods can be used to teach the students more about the values and why the school have them.

The extended hours at Lebone give individuals the opportunity to focus more on their work and develop the needed skills and attain more knowledge. In contrast the long hours at Lebone can also be tiresome at times and it can take a toll on the individual’s attention span.

Although Lebone is a great school, it can be very overwhelming. New individuals that go to Lebone for the first time will experience a totally new and different way of doing things which can be overwhelming at times. The IEB curriculum is also more challenging than other curricula. According to Marc Falconer, headmaster of the King David High School, the IEB is a different kind of assessment. “In the state system it is perfectly possible to achieve a good matric by drill and practice, while this is not true for an IEB candidate.”
 
The IEB curriculum is “cognitively more demanding” than the government curriculum and individuals are better prepared for tertiary education. On a negative note, most individuals agree that the IEB is a much more difficult exam. Individuals might find it harder to gain distinctions and gain university admission. Universities do not distinguish between state or private schools and therefore students could be at a disadvantage when applying at universities.

There is a language barrier at Lebone. There are Setswana, Afrikaans, English and many more languages that can make communication or understanding difficult at times. Language is also sometimes used as a bullying tool to exclude individuals.

The diverse cultures can sometimes create misunderstandings at Lebone as not all cultures have the same traditions or values. I recommend that all individuals should be made aware of the different cultures so that everyone is more understanding of each other.

In my time here I have felt inspired and gained a lot of experience. Therefore I think Lebone impacts individuals on a far greater scale than everyday work. Lebone is a lifestyle and I know that people leave Lebone a better person than when they arrive here. 

Second Year B.Ed PUKKE Student-Teacher reflects on first 10 days at Lebone

The Heartbeat of Lebone.

by Gerda VAN WYNGAARDT

When I started at Lebone I was confused, it was a new experience, completely unknown to me and I felt like an outsider. Within 4 days time I felt more at home and a part of the school. Every day we had meetings with Mr Thomas and Mr Prins, and they encouraged us to interact more rather than just to observe our classes and to capture everything in our journals. Also not just to observe everything in our classes, but to observe everything happening at Lebone as a whole (teachers, students, and the system) critically. Mr Prins captured my attention with a metaphor of the iceberg, one can look at it from a distance and wonder or you can get geared up and start a journey towards it to find the invisible. A great metaphor to be used in the writing of this essay where my main question is: “What creates the heartbeat of a School?” for example Lebone.

We start to look at the teachers at Lebone. They are motivated and have this positive air around them, and this gets carried over to the students, making them more motivated and eager to learn and do well in their academics. The interaction between the students and the teachers is magnificent; all the learners greet me every morning on my way up to Mr. Thomas office.  Then you get into the office and all the staff members are so friendly and welcome you to the school wanting to hear how you are and what your weekend was like. Personally I experienced that the teachers are striving to do better and to enrich the students. They aim to make a difference every day, to do the best they can and then even better and beyond.  If we look at the iceberg metaphor again then I can compare the teachers as the gear they need to get to the iceberg, by providing them with the correct knowledge and skills they will need when reaching this iceberg, and to be able to see the invincible, being their possible future success.

The students are still young and lively, you can see in their eyes they want to be part of the journey towards the iceberg, or at least I would say 80% of them. In every school you have those ones that just attend school and go forward, they are on this journey and when the iceberg is reached then they will just stay stuck on the boat looking from nearby.  Then you have the exceptional students for example during one of the periods in Mr. O’Donoghues class, they discussed their possible year projects for grade 12, after class this one girl stayed back and went to Mr. O’Donoghues to discussing her project, she had already worked out and planned for where she is going with it and what she was aiming for. Most of the others were just sitting there and you could see they had no idea what they wanted to do for this project. This girl is already on her journey towards the iceberg. Almé told us about personal development of some of the student from previous years till now, they are growing up and starting to become the persons they are going to be when they are all grown, they are creating their values they want in life.

In Lebone there are a lot of opportunities for the students, they’ve started this year with a GEAR(Grow Explore Achieve React) program that includes all the cultural activities and lots more diversity like community service groups, marimbas, sign language and many more they can get involved with.

Looking at Lebone’s system, meaning the way the school is run on a day-to-day base. The school is very academically orientated. Although there are a lot of extracurricular activities balancing the school, academics is the main purpose of the school. The system of the school if we go back to the iceberg metaphor, I would describe as the guidelines for this journey, giving them rules, structure and advice to reach the iceberg. They have CC periods, where they give students the time to go to their different teachers to help them sort out any problems; this I personally think is a great idea, but then I heard that it is not that efficient because students don’t use the time they are given to do what they should, instead they just relax and take that time off.  A solution for this could be to get forms that have to be signed everyday during CC period.

The school is working hard to be more innovative, they designed this app which the student s parents can download and in this manner the school can send out all their letters and post homework and test dates on it. This is a good manner to be connected with the parents and the success rate in other schools sounds very good. Now it is just for Lebone to start it and get it out to the parents.  This app could be seen as a guideline for their journey towards the iceberg, involving their parents to support them all the way.

Another question that came up during our meeting sessions was if the school, meaning the students, connect with each other, for example does the upper school and lower school get in touch with each other. During a tutor session one of the things they discussed was that they were going to reach out to the lower school as their community service. That means that the upper school is making a plan to interact with the lower school, but I do not think that it should be a community service project, rather create a buddy system where the upper school students get a lower school student to be personally involved with and as a community project reach out to the nearby community.

To get back to the main question: What creates the heartbeat of Lebone? My answer would have to be: the interaction between the teachers, students and system, cause if you leave one of them out then it’s like taking an organ out of a human body, it will either still work but not as sufficient as it should or it would die and collapse.  Although there is lots of time spent planning, all the plans don’t always get followed through as they should, for example CC period and the GEAR program, because there are still a lot of students that are not participating in any of these activities, for example, I asked one of the boys what he does for cultural period and he said: “No mam, I only play rugby.”  We attended an enrichment period that was also not very sufficient in my eyes, because the students don’t really listen they just liked watching a video clip played for them and after that they didn’t really care what the main reason for the meeting was.

After my observation at Lebone thus far, I would say Lebone is a well-planned school with a mission that states: “To develop creative and imaginative thinkers. Skilled individuals, able to investigate and act on opportunities with a vision and passion to serve the nation and ever broadening community.” They are well away on their journey towards the iceberg. 

Third Year B.Tech PUKKE Student-Teacher reflects on 10 days at Lebone

What is the impact of Lebone DNA on students? by Ontiretse MOTENE

With this reflective letter I aim to write a critical and evidence-based report on my 10 days of experience in Lebone since the start of the academic year 2014. My observation and daily experience will serve as evidence in my attempt to answer the research question at hand. In addition, I may make sincere and humble recommendations where relevant.  Lebone II College of the Royal Bafokeng is a pioneer school in dedication and commitment to provision of quality education. This can be deduced by observing systems that make Lebone function and these systems are what make the DNA of Lebone. According to a document that Mr Thomas made available to us in my previous visit to the school as a teacher intern, this DNA is a collective metaphor for the values of Lebone; the personality of Lebone; the essence of Lebone and many others.  This DNA was deliberately designed to inspire unique education, academic excellence and to produce well rounded human beings. However, this letter is subjective and focuses only on three aspects constituted in the DNA of Lebone which I have noted to be of significant impact on the Lebone students. These aspects are the environment; deliberate impact on students and the G.E.A.R. programme.

The environment I refer to in the context of this letter is rather the learning environment and includes the available facilities and educational resources that are found in Lebone. In the Design-Tech and EGD block where I spent most of my time the classrooms are fully furnished and the learning resources are in abundance. This has a positive impact on the learning process taking place because all the learners in the classroom receive drawing instruments. Therefore equal opportunities to learn are catered for. However I think it should be emphasised to the learners that these resources are to be used with care. Furthermore the physical environment of the school creates an ambience that inspires transparent education. As I looked at the design of most class rooms in the school I recognised that probably the glass-walls were purposefully designed to encourage transparency. This has an impact on learning, but this impact may be positive or negative on the learners. On one account I noticed that learners do not create a lot of movement and chaos in the classrooms when left unattended, this may be because they are aware that someone could be seeing them from outside the classroom while others may naturally be distracted by movement and noises from outside as the learner would keep looking outside due to any stimulus that reaches their sensory register. I asked a group of grade 9 learners what they think about the learning in the EGD classroom and a portion of the group showed concern about the occasional noise and movement created by deliveries and maintenance work motor vehicles.

What does deliberate impact mean? In my time here at Lebone I noticed that the culture and routine of how things are done is aimed at influencing certain changes that are aligned with the DNA of the school and I have seen this sort of trend on more than one account by different teachers. In the first day of school I had an opportunity to witness one such deliberate and positive influence by a teacher on the new grade 8 learners. This observation was interesting because the majority of the learners in that group are new students to Lebone. I was eager to see if there were any dynamic changes in the group influenced by the teacher or the older students of Lebone in that group. Yes I noticed the subtle things that happened such as the change in walking speed and greeting every one you see. The school also, I believe, sent the grade 8 learners on a camp to impact on their behaviour as student and the expectations on them towards the school. What is more profound that I learnt about Lebone is the ceremonies and events that do change and shape life and human experience.

I am sure that the newer staff to Lebone would agree that the holistic experience in Lebone causes a contagious impact that flows from teacher to teacher interactions and then to the learners.

Lebone is one of the schools that gives learners opportunities to explore their talents and interests and also develop skills through extra-curricular activities. A typical school day at Lebone starts at 7:30 to16:30, but unlike other local schools in the bafokeng area the extended school hours at Lebone allows the learners to participate in sports, cultural activities now termed “GEAR” programs and also the “CC” (consultation and consolidation) period which is the time reserved for catching up on school work. Similarly one may notice that these activities mentioned here above are ways to influence positive change in the development of the learners. I have not spent time in any of the “Gear” programs however during the day of signing up for the programs I wondered if the learners where well informed and deliberate in their choices and whether the senior students were choosing the programs that were somewhat complimentary to their academic subjects. Lastly, I think the consultation and consolidation period is a good strategy to give the learners the opportunity to take responsibility of their own learning. Conversely I noticed a few “lost molecules”, some learners are unsure of what is the purpose of this period and do not make the most of it. Could this period be monitored from time to time?

I would like to believe that I have answered the question: what is the impact of Lebone DNA on students? My findings point out that Lebone is a school of deliberate action. The impact of the Lebone DNA on students is positive and evident in learners and this is despite the minor “not so positive” things that I observed subjectively. Lastly, I have had the best experience yet and have enjoyed being part of Lebone for this brief period. As the saying here goes “Shine your light” I will certainly take away my experiences and inspire the world out there.