Eco-School Workshop on African Time

“I live in a country where the speed limit is 90km/h, please put on your seat belt and hold on to the door,” I told my passenger as I, not so confidently, tried to maneuver down the curves of Golden Gate Mountains at 130km/h. It was already 8.55am, and the eco-school workshop was suppose to start in five minutes time at 9.00am.

I was panicking.
I don't like to be late.

It didn't help that Senitel Primary school was probably another 36km away at Qwa-Qwa, and that we were, er hrm, also the organisers of this workshop.

Thankfully (although it should not be an excuse), the rest of the educators also functioned on African Time (i.e. anytime). When we arrived at 9.20am, only two out of six schools arrived, not including our guest speaker from a neighbouring school just down the road less than 1km away. Those who arrived before us seemed to be relatively calm and accepted our apologies as if they were very used to such situations.

After the arrival of our guest speaker, we finally managed to start the workshop at 10.00am with a total of three schools. Slowly but surely, more schools arrived, including one school whom we did not invite. One school did not turn up, and even the teachers from our hosting school apparently lost their way too.

Nevertheless, it was a good and fruitful session for the 5 schools and 10 educators who attended the workshop. Three out of the five schools gave feedback that the time allocated for the workshop was too short. In fact, after we ended at the workshop at 12pm, packed and cleaned up the place, there was one more school that was still deep in discussion with our guest speaker. It was heartwarming to see the interests and commitment from the educators, including the guest speaker from Letotolo Primary. Despite a rocky start, I believed that the success of this workshop was due to the following factors:

Focused
There was no frills. The main objective of the workshop was to help our eco-schools in their portfolios for submission on 31st Oct, and the agenda was simple: 1) Recap on the programme objectives & expectations, 2) a sharing by a green flag eco-school, 3) discussion & sharing of porfolios and 4) sharing of common problems with eco-school portfolios.

Expertise
There were three “experts” to help the educators check their portfolios and to share their experience. Thulani – an eco-school evaluator in 2007, he was able to share what the evaluators look out for, and what were some common issues with rejected portfolios. Mr Finger – a fellow educator that can empathise with the challenges faced by the schools and could give practical advice. Moreover, he had the spirit of sharing by showing his portfolio (both 2007 & 2008) for others to learn and ask questions. Myself – an educator that is also familiar with putting up portfolios & reports for school awards in a competitive education system. Thus, there was a high ratio of facilitators to schools, and schools were able to attain critical and constructive advice for their individual portfolios.

Sincerity & Passion
All the facilitators had a genuine interest to share their experiences and also constantly encouraged the teachers to believe in the value that they are doing for their learners and schools. One school provided feedback that the workshop was “constructive” and “motivational”.

However, during the course of this workshop, I feel that although a lot of issues were addressed, I still feel that many of the portfolios would not be able to meet the standards. The main problem was that right from the start, most of the schools did not know how to use to audit to help them choose their theme. Many had mismatches, e.g. their school audit shows that they did well in the theme “healthy living” and were poor in “heritage and culture”. Yet, the school still choose “healthy living”. Also, during the celebration of water week, they had lessons on how to save water (which falls under “resource use”). Thus, there was a lack of consistency. It was also difficult to educate the teachers on this concept. Moreover, it was already impossible to change the theme and their plans for the coming submission. I fear to think that the schools might just eventually change the results of their audit to match their theme. This will definitely defeat the purpose of the programme!

This opportunity to organise and conduct the workshop actually kind of motivate me to look forward to help the KIPs schools this year embark on the eco-school programme and project next year. To be fair to the schools, I feel that we need to inform them early, and probably also conduct this workshop during the mid-year. I feel that with proper guidance, educators need not be told one month before submission that their fundamental focus was wrong. It can be very discouraging, especially for a school who had taken effort in their programmes & portfolio but chose a theme that did not support the gaps that surfaced as a result of their audit. Ok, enough said.