Jabulani Project

Gap Year Students

Isaac and Fiona

Our gardening lesson at Zwelibanzi was short this week because we had to go to Mangosuthu and we haven't yet worked out a new time that fits in. Once we had found a room and got the group together we only had 15 minutes left before we had to leave so we decided to just do a team-building session with them.

The first activity we did was a "get to know you" game called, "where the wind blows". We've picked up on a lot of tension in the Zwelibanzi group that we work with over the past few weeks so on the one hand we thought this was just what they needed but on the other it could have gone very badly. Fortunately they loved the game and even evolved the game themselves to involve group hugs!

Time was short and, as the group was enjoying the game, we played it until the end of the session. We left to go on to Mangosuthu feeling we'd had a really succesful time there.

This weeks Magnosuthu lesson was on interview skills, to follow on from the CV class. Emma and Anna couldn't make it this week so Isaac and Fiona put their two classes together to make a group of around 200 grade 12 pupils. We were given an hour to teach interview skills and Mimo would lead the second hour on a new topic.

To avoid any confusion for the teachers we went from Fiona's lesson plan. Overall it went very well. It's surprising how quickly an hour goes when you're lecturing to such a large audience; one might have thought it would be the opposite. As usual it took a lot of work to make the class interactive and get the pupils to ask questions as they are so used to being talked at and not being given an opportunity. However we did manage to get a decent bit out of them and their round of applause at the end of the session was enough positive feedback for us.