JONATHAN JANSEN | It’s time teachers taught outside their comfort zones
Too often we have educators teaching in the same kinds of schools they graduated from, thus sustaining inequalities, writes Jonathan Jansen
When Kerneels van der Bijl (not his real name), a young, white Afrikaans-speaking student at Stellenbosch University recently approached me, his request caught me off-guard. I had taught him and 280 other teacher education students for a term and had them work through a case study of a turnaround school where I work in the morning. The school had a spell of poor academic results and is located in a volatile community where gangs and drugs and absentee parents were common. Kerneels said he wanted to offer his services for free to teach his subject at this high school. I was overjoyed, knowing that such a placement would be a life-changing experience for this courageous young man...
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