This has been a crazy week back to school. After 3 weeks of holiday, I was rested, but not ready to work exactly. However, I did have a lot to look forward to this week. Lucy with the embassy arranged for a visiting astronomer from the University of Wisconsin to talk to my learners. He works in coordination with South African Large Telescope in Sutherland (Karoo). This is indeed a large telescope, 11 meters (approx. 11 yards) across. I was able to attend a teacher’s workshop and hear him speak and meet with him afterwards. The next day, he came with Lucy and Mary Ellen (also from embassy) to speak to my grade 11 learners (all 71! of them). He was great. He really got them interested in science, and he and the class had a quite lively discussion about telescopes, planets, stars, galaxies, and the Earth, Moon, and Sun. My, normally subdued students, asked great questions and did not want him to leave; as he walked the school yard, students asked for his autograph and email address to ask more questions. Afterwards, Lucy and Mary Ellen made a very nice donation of science books to begin our school’s library. All in all, it was a great day. The week kept getting better, as I went to a braii Thursday night after work and met some graduate students here on Fulbright exchange. The down side of the week came on Friday, my car started making bad noises, and eventually refused to go faster than 20kph; it was like it was stuck in first gear or something, the way the engine kept revving. It went back to Honda for work, which meant no car for the weekend. The good news was Abram (my principal) gave me a lift home and had no problem taking me to work and back to Honda to pick my car up. The interesting news awaited me Friday night when I got home from dropping my car off.
Here comes the parenting part…
I get home and am greeted by Karabo, Poughie’s son who is usually at boarding school. I figure he is home for a visit, and he and his mom, Poughie, will be spending the weekend home. Not quite. As we are eating dinner, Poughie says that I will be getting some parenting practice for the weekend. I sometimes have difficulty with accents here (like they do with mine) and asked what she meant. Well, it turned out that Karabo was home for the weekend, but Poughie was going to her sister’s for the Saturday and would return Sunday night. I would indeed be getting some parenting practice in. It also turned out that Karabo had a big science project due on Monday which in typical teenager fashion, he had not even started. In addition, I had already promised Lally, a teacher at school, that I would come to her house to work on the 10th grade composite scores (kind of like report cards).
Karabo is 15 , but looks 12; he was very polite and helped his mom clean before she left to her sister’s. Now, I had heard some things about Karabo not liking school very much and getting into some trouble, but I figured that I would just see how things went. Saturday after his mom left, Karabo went to hang out with his friends and I went to Lally’s to work. That evening Karabo did not come home till after 8:30 pm, which may not seem late, but it was after dark and that is late here. Also, he had done none of his project yet. When he came in, I directed him to the table to show me his project, and he worked until 10:30 pm., but there was still the majority of the project left to do. When he went to sleep, I noticed that his keys were left out. Now, here is probably where I get the Sneaky Parenting Practice Award, I figured that he would try to leave the house to hang out with his friends again, so I took his keys. In SA, keys lock people out and people in, so with no keys he would be literally locked in to do his work in the morning. The next morning I made pancakes, and when he woke up I nicely offered breakfast at the table with his books. We worked for a couple of hours then he started getting distracted and began looking around. I asked if he had lost something and if I could help. He said he couldn’t find his keys, so I let him know that he shouldn’t worry—I found them and had them in my pocket, and would keep them safe until the project was done. So without any fuss, we spent the rest of the morning working – him on his project and me marking my papers. When he was finished, he began packing up his stuff to go out; when I announced that it was now time to see what he learned – I began to ask questions quizzing him on the material he was supposed to not just complete, but learn. All in all, he was a pretty good sport about it, he never said a thing, but I am guessing I will not be doing any more parenting practice in soon.
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