“Impactful.”
That was the final word we settled on and lifted up to the heavens as we concluded our workday in a circle with our new friends at City Year South Africa and the Naturena Primary School No 2 in Johannesburg.
It’s hard for me to put in words how fulfilling our experience was visiting, interacting and sharing with the people of Naturena. It’s one of those things you have to see and feel for yourself, but I hope the pictures that we will share later today of our young men laughing…and dancing…and teaching…and learning new games, with primary age children from grades R (somewhat equivalent to our Kindergarten) through 7th grade, will give you a glimpse into how moved so many of us were with our 7 hours at school yesterday. In short, it was impactful because we were immediately able to see the value of sharing between cultures. We discussed the power of language and communication, arts, and sports. From the moment we looked out our bus to the front of the school’s campus and saw the entire administrative staff of the school along with our City Year South Africa working team standing with open arms ready to greet us, I knew it would be special. Wow moment, indeed. And what about with each new classroom we entered, seeing the students stand to welcome us, in unison…wow moment, every time!
I was also inspired by the good work of City Year South Africa, getting to know some of our hosts such as one of the leaders, Solly, and the reasons why he has aligned with City Year, reminded me the power of mentorship and civic engagement. City Year South Africa employs young South African youth from the ages of 18-25 and gives them an immediate opportunity to make a difference in the lives of their local communities. The City Year South Africa residents of Naturena work with primary youth to motivate and educate the next generation of South African leaders, while the administrative staff of City Year motivates and educates the residents on valuable career and life skills. Many of the City Year residents look forward to becoming educators themselves, while others are working towards careers in the military, science and the arts. Seeing City Year in action gave our students a unique opportunity to see how to become true social change agents through community service. Thank you City Year South Africa and the people of Naturena for opening your doors to us for a day!
A special shout out also must go out to our young men who really showed how they “got it” yesterday. I again wish you could see our Eastern Men of Excellence during our huddle, pushing through a two hour session where they took the lead in reflecting on the day’s events and debating some tough issues. We wrestled with how to compare the education system in South Africa with our own experiences with education in the United States, all the while recognizing that our experiences while informative, were still just a small taste of a much larger system both here and back in DC. Our men recognized and celebrated the challenging work they saw the students learning at such a young age, marveled at how they could be responsible for learning at least 3 languages, and questioned how they could “bottle up” some of the energy they felt and export it to the United States. I was impressed with how eager our young men are to share their experiences with friends, family and leaders back home. The work we start here definitely will not end here, and that makes me smile.
I can’t wait to share with you all our next day’s adventure through Kliptown. Stay tuned!
Law Programs Teacher
Eastern High School