Study Abroad, Honors Program & Other Student Experiences

Had my very firt day at SHAWCO ! SHAWCO is a program that University of Cape Town students participate in, which allows us to go into the townships (also known as shantytowns) of South Africa and teach classes. I’ve been assigned the task of teaching math to fifteen seventh graders. On my first day I wasn’t able to make it to the training date so I arrived completely unprepared and with no idea in the least of what to expect. I found myself alone in this class of fifteen energetic seventh graders. We struggled through the first introductions and the first lesson and actually finished early. We stood there looking at each other for a few minutes. When suddenly I noticed and odd silence. There was one boy who had been singing and humming under his breath, had stopped. I asked him if he wanted to sing for us and his face brightened up. He and his three buddies got up and sang an incredible song in Xhosa for us. After that the girls of course wanted to sing. They did and were beautiful. They then asked ME to sing. “Oh my God !” I did it though. Then suddenly I don’t know how the entire class got up and sang an incredible joyous song in some language I couldn’t tell, but every single one was beaming and laughing and clapping and running in circles around me. The singing didn’t stop as we cleaned up the class room and the singing continued as we all walked back to the main shawco center. The singing persisted until finally I had to get on the bus and go home. I’m sure that when I’m sent to teach math and everyone starts singing I’m probably doing something wrong, but what a moment!