Emyezweni News March 2006

Emyezweni News

Training
The new term started well with two staff training days; we focused on special needs teaching and target setting for the new academic year. Each member of staff has selected an area of professional development in which they would like learn new skills and we have made sure that these targets are fully SMART!
We spent the second day identifying known children with special educational needs and planning individual educational plans for them; it was good to pool ideas and expertise so that each child will receive the best possible care and educational profile for the new term. Rachel and myself have been busy assessing new children and working out class programmes for the year. We have asked Vathi as part of her new teaching role to take on some specific special needs work with individuals and she has been working closely with Rachel to learn how to do this.
Admissions
The children arrived for their first day on Wednesday 18th; we now have 75 children split between three classes with a further 80 children on our waiting list. We have our first Afrikaans-speaking children in the school. Wandile (boy) and Wandisa (girl) are four-year-old twins and although they understand Xhosa their first language is Afrikaans. This isn’t a problem for our local teachers as they all understand Afrikaans well, but presents a bit of a challenge for myself and Rachel as our limited linguistic skills don’t yet stretch to Afrikaans!
After two weeks of rearranging classes to accommodate new children and coping with the usual slow return from summer holidays in the Eastern Cape and Transkei, school life has finally settled down to a calm routine.
Volunteers and staffing
This term we have two new student volunteers; Bethany Wales and Sarah Hayter are both serving at Helderberg Church and are working three mornings a week in Emyezweni. We are so pleased to welcome Janine Clay back to the youngest class, she will be with us for the next four months and we are looking forward to learning from her expertise in the early year’s age group.
Norma, a member of one of our Lwandle Cell groups has recently joined the staff on a part time training programme, she is working mainly with Ntombekaya and myself in the Ibhungane (Ladybird) class for two days each week. Our aim is to train Norma up in Early Years development and to benefit from her natural aptitude for working with children.
At the end of March we say goodbye to Sindi as she has obtained a post a Community worker in Lwandle. We know that this will release Sindi to work more closely with her HIV clients and that the wider community will now benefit more fully from her expertise and skills but we will REALLY miss her in Emyezweni.

Extra Curricular Activities
Swimming
The oldest children in Bhabatane (Butterfly) Class are currently enjoying weekly swimming lessons and good progress is being made. One of our most severely special needs children has really benefited from this experience and after a shaky start the confidence he has gained from swimming is starting to spill over into the rest of his school experience.
Homework Club
This term we have begun an after school homework club with older children. The aim of this club is to help with any given homework for ex-Emyezweni pupils now attending the local Xhosa primary school and also to develop the children’s expertise in written and spoken English. We have six regular members and as we get more adults involved in this I hope numbers will grow as it is important to give each child as much individual time and input as possible. It has been wonderful to keep up contact with ex-pupils and it is fast becoming the highlight of my week as we build relationship and continue care of our children after they have officially left us.
Visitors
The beginning of this term has been of overseas visitors to Emyezweni, Clare and Tony Coggan from Brighton, Dave and Pearl Pride from Bournemouth visited in February; both couples have been great supporters of Emyezweni and it was great to show off our growing school to them! We are really looking forward to seeing Jennie and Tony Chapman who have been working so hard organising a shipment of resources out from the UK for us; Jennie came out on a short term team three years ago and we are pleased to be able to meet Tony on this trip.
We love having visitors in school and the children really benefit from meeting new people.
Visas
During march and April both myself and Rachel need to renew our volunteer visas; this is a bit of a nightmare as it involves collecting together lots of fairly random paperwork and several trips through to the Home Affairs office at Paarl. Nothing is guaranteed and it really does seem to be a case of who you get to talk to and what they have had for breakfast as to whether you get the information you need. We also need to leave R4000 each as a deposit, which can only be reclaimed once you the visa has expired and you have left the country. This, plus the administration costs and the necessity for a medical certificate and chest X-rays means that we have to find about R5000 each, not an easy task!
On a more positive note we are very confident that we will both obtain extensions to our visas but would ask everyone out there to get praying just in case!