Discussion forum

Educators

Registering for ICT has been a one of the best move one has made as a an educator so far. Its the best because it has granted me the opportunity to meet fellow colleagues to share ideas in a forum like the 2008/9 group. If the department of education had a platform where teachers all over SA can communicate either provincially or nationally. It has come to me attention that the fear and challenges that I face everyday as an educator are not just my imagination because through out the deliberation of the discussions, I realized that other educators face the same or even worse situations as educators that I face. The Idea of a forum for teachers is one that I have toying around with. Lets think about the possibilities of a unified teachers in SA.

Ethical issues

Colleagues

I was looking at how some pictures land up in our discussion forum and one recently was the one about the school girl and a boy making out wearing school uniforms. My question when I saw the Picture was of mixed feelings. One part of me was saying how can these children behave this way, probably they never used condoms. The other side of me was saying how can we publish this and discuss it without asking questions like who got these picture and how did they get it? Did the person who got the picture tried to help the students by talking to them or even their parents? How is this different to cheap journalism, i.e. tabloid journalism. ? The journalism I am talking of relates to stories about celebrities like Diana the late princess and stories about Manto Tshabalala Msimang drinking habits, the Caster Semenya furore, etc. How far can we go to create havoc in the name of news? Do we care about the welfare of the people involved in the pictures we take and publish? If these children were ours, would we gladly look at this pictures and say our education system has gone to the dogs? Would we call them and seek counselling for them or just let it be what it is?

SAT Format, Policy issue

Teachers

I teach grade 12 and grade 9 maths at my school. what concerns me is the fact that the format for grade 9 potfolio as it stands requires 6 tasks for the entire year. The tasks are made up of activities of 3 each. This means that you need 3 multiplied by 6 which is eighteen. The SAT is regarded as one task. If you have seen how long the SAT is, you will understand what i am talking of. How is it that the policy permits that the grade 9 be so different with the grade 12, which is 7 tasks for the whole year. 7 tasks are just that, seven, not more. How can an educator be expected to do 18 activities and 7 more activities. Are we just people who are there to complete these tasks for the sake of completing these tasks or there is quality in all this?

Respect

Colleagues

I have been recently blown away by people who stay away from institutions of learning. Their commitment to learning. There is a group of educators who come from KZN, FREE State, LIMPOPO, etc...these are some of the educators who sacrifice a lot to study at institutions like UJ. They come by taxis, some by overnight transport just to get a qualification. Why is it that most of the people who stay just a couple of Kilometres away from these campuses do not take the opportunity with both hands? I also noticed that institutions like UJ, Pretoria University, Wits, etc are full of people who do not stay in or around Gauteng. Why is this? Is it that those who stay in Gauteng don't value education as much as those who stay in Gauteng, or there is something else that makes this picture the way it is?