SHAWCO

Though most of my escapades this semester have been all for fun, I've also been trying to give back a bit. UCT has this program called SHAWCO which tutors and gives guidance to underprivileged (a drastic understatement in many cases) students in the area. Any extra help these kids can get will do them a tremendous amount of good considering how little personal attention they get from their real teachers. SHAWCO is divided up into different age groups and different subject matters and my program is called SMART. We tutor 11th grade students, from the township Khayelitsha, Math and Natural Sciences. Townships are essentially ghettos with mass poverty, violence, and informal housing and Khayelitsha is the largest of these in all of SA.
Each Tuesday, we load up in the van and drive out to Khayelitsha were we tutor at the Manyano High School.


I tutor three kids, Trish, Akhona, and Sibobalo. My kids are primary Xhosa speakers so at first it was hard dealing with the cultural and language differences, but quickly we became comfortable with each other. This semester the kids are learning chemistry so even though its not my expertise, I've been teaching about moles and chemical bonding this semester. The speed at which they have picked up the material has been different very each kid, but overall I've been impressed with how well they've done. Some concepts we've been doing took me a long time to get and they seem to be taking it in stride.

Most recently they've struggled with balancing reactions and doing mass to mol calculations. I brought in with me some props, erasers and pins, to help illustrate the reactions, and after that they were able to do the example problems! It was incredibly rewarding to watch these kids go from struggling to understanding.

The state of the classroom was surprisingly bad. Most chairs in the jammed room are broken and every desk is completely carved up and written all over. The chalk boards have little no chalk and the erasers pads were busted. The floors are completely dusty and dirty and in the corner of the room there usually is a pile of trash including wrappers and banana peels. A school's needs are pretty basic, but with such a poorly run public school system and a lack of funding the schools are more or less in disarray.

Thus far, its been an extremely rewarding experience and one of the most worthwhile parts of my trip to so far. I feel like I'm having a real impact by doing something on a personal level that will make a big difference in their success as adults. With everything going against them, I'm happy to do what I can to make their lives better.

Side note: I've been missing everyone from back home a lot recently. Its hard being away from everything that is familiar and from the people you love. I especially miss Mom and Dad, Jackattack, and Kara. I love you and miss you.