While some teachers were debating policies and politics at a national Sadtu conference last weekend, others were being empowered with resilience and innovative ways of educating Generation Y at the second annual TEACH! Conference in Grahamstown.
While some teachers were debating policies and politics at a national Sadtu conference last weekend, others were being empowered with resilience and innovative ways of educating Generation Y at the second annual TEACH! Conference in Grahamstown.
Some 160 delegates from independent schools across the country, as well as a few local government schools gathered for seminars and workshops by speakers of international calibre at Eden Grove recently.
“The emphasis was on teacher motivation, teacher resilience and helping them cope,” said Theuns Opperman, Head of Studies at Kingswood College and organiser of the event.
Dr Jonathon Moch, CEO of SuperSmartTeachers, used his experience in raising the current standard of teacher capabilities to kick off the conference with a seminar on teacher resilience. He emphasised the impact of time, relationships, rest, diet, exercise and finances as impacting how teachers teach, as well as how to effectively manage these areas to improve the practice of teaching.
“The teachers found this workshop quite valuable, because teacher burn-out is a big problem,” said Opperman.
“Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is also very topical because we all have kids in our classes who suffer from this,” said Opperman.
Dave Pughe-Parry, who was diagnosed with ADHD in his mid-40s and who formed the ADD coaching service called Living ADDventure, offered teachers advice on how to deal with learners who have the disorder.
There were presentations on career guidance, how to prepare for the future, leadership in schools, empowering teachers and pupils to use technology and social networking in the classroom, and on giving knowledge value, as well as exhibitions of books and interactive whiteboards known as SMART boards.
The Kingswood College Council, during a forward-planning lekgotla, recognised that there were very few local opportunities for ordinary teachers to develop their skills, and developed the TEACH! Conference as a solution.
“We find that the Eastern Cape is quite remote,” said Opperman. “These kinds of workshops always happen in Gauteng or one of the other big cities and then there is only one person who can possibly go. So we decided to bring the speakers and the presenters here, make a big conference out of it and open it up to other schools to make it more accessible to everybody.”
Opperman explained that the conference fees paid by the independent schools were used to provide all local government schools with two complimentary tickets each. Not all the tickets had been used, however.
“We’ve got schools from Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal, Western Cape and quite a few schools from Port Elizabeth, but not enough local schools.”
He pointed out that the conference corresponded with the start of the school holidays and said, “We need to make the date more user-friendly next year.”
Aside from the poor attendance by government schools, Opperman feels the conference was a success and the response very positive.
“What was heartening is that I had a number of schools who came last year who came again this year, my favourite being Transkei Primary School,” said Opperman.
“They came down in two buses last year with 20 teachers and they did the same thing this year, so we must be doing something right.”
