I live on a corner, but instead of having the typical four-corner intersection, I have a round about with stop signs. This is new to me, not because of the traffic circle, but because of my experiences with traffic circles. In my early years of driving, the only traffic circle I went though actually had five entrances, but a single lane from each entrance yielded to make sure it was safe and then proceeded. I’ve been through several round abouts since then and that was the typical pattern. Well, welcome to a new experience! At my corner, you stop before proceeding. Now, that’s not too hard to do, even for me, except for the morning when the engine hasn’t gotten warm and my car is reluctant to head out from the car park. Even though I’m becoming better and better each day with maneuvering the car, as I approach this round about, I find that I have to keep one foot on the brake as I stop and the heel of that same foot on the accelerator to give it enough gas as I try to shift gears or keep it going in second while at the same time anticipating who’s going straight through the round about or simply taking a turn. One simple solution I’ve found so far is to leave by 6:45. There’s just not enough traffic to worry about so I just go all the way around the circle to make my right turn and don’t bother to stop.My next challenge, after trying to make a right-hand turn onto Duncan Street, is making it through a series of stop lights. The traffic on Duncan is much lighter before 7 a.m. so I can actually make the turn, even with 2 lanes of traffic coming straight and a third lane turning in front of me. Then once on Duncan I can sometimes actually go fast enough to get into fourth gear! Duncan Street dead ends at the Brooklyn round about with two lanes entering, a special inner circle for the taxis (which are like mini busses) and 5 exits with pedestrians crossing right in front of you at each one. Again, you stop first – a really good idea before risking your life to get around to your preferred exit. Once onto the street you’ve selected, then you have to figure out if you ended up in the correct lane to avoid large trucks that are now blocking a lane or a car that’s decided to stop to unload passengers, or yet another exit that you forgot existed on that particular street. I’ve found that “looking both ways” demands eyes all over your head. By the time I make it to work, usually less than 15 minutes when I leave before 7, I’ve done quite a lot of looking and managed to drive in the correct lane.
Looking both ways is also important at work. I can now find my way around my building and have learned a couple of ways to get from point A to point B. I’ve been minimally helpful to some hapless student who can’t find a particular office. And I can get to the library, log in to the library page to search for articles, and check out books. The more subtle aspect of looking both ways occurs in understanding the context in which I work. A few examples might help. I visited Nkidi’s classroom last week. She’s doing a literacy seminar designed to take the issues and concerns that arose during the students’ 3-week field experience and use those as the basis for instruction. I thought that was such a good example of building on students’ interests to create a meaningful learning curriculum. As I entered the classroom, the students were trying to negotiate for an earlier start time and she was trying to explain that she would get back in touch with them after checking to be sure that there would be a room available. Those students were relentless in pushing her to change the start time. Once she finally moved beyond that opening issue, she presented her plan based on the data she had collected from their reflections. I watched students text, listened to side conversations, saw notes passing around. Having seen her be firm with individual students, I was surprised by the limited ways that she redirected their behavior. Later, when we were having tea, I told her that I thought her students were treating her rudely. She said that, “You never know who is in your classroom and how they were raised.” She went on to elaborate, letting me know that the deep seated attitudes towards race are still an issue and she recognizes that not all her learners come with respect towards their Black professors. Obviously, her eyesight on this matter is much keener than my own.
In my role here, I’m working to support faculty members get their work published. I listen to my friends talk about their teaching loads and more significantly, the numbers of students they teach. The Afrikaans sections are generally 60 students or more in each of the 2 sections; the English section is 35-40 students. When they set up for class, their classrooms may be too small, the rooms may not have blinds so when showing videos/dvds, they have to find alternative spaces, when the technology man sets up/brings in equipment, it doesn’t always work or there’s something missing (like the speakers), or when trying to show an overhead, none of the projectors are working. They are revising their program again based on an external mandate and at the same time, developing a distance version to improve the qualifications of teachers already in the field. When I talk with the Head of Department (HOD), he expresses his concerns that they publish in the journals approved by the Department of Education so the writers and the department receive the subsidies that the government pays for publication. So, I’m looking and talking with people about how they can publish data that they’ve collected, how they can begin new studies, and also write up pieces they’ve started but not completed.
While this context sounds difficult, it's important to look at it more carefully. There's certainly a familiarity in the voices and experiences of these teacher educators that we share. While we may be technology rich, I can remember times that I've called for help with technology that I had set up ready to run and then it wouldn't. I've complained about my work load with the number of inquiry students I had or the number of case studies I had to grade. I worry about publishing data I've gathered but just can't quite get written up. How much alike we are in the struggles that we face with our professional lives and work settings. However, within this context and relieved of all the teaching responsibilities, I have the chance to rethink some of the things that I do at work. I have different sounding boards to reflect their own ideas about what works and doesn't work because when I look their way and they look my way, we have a new space for looking and thinking about things that otherwise get bogged down and blurry. Believe it or not, all this looking around is really stimulating and I’ve got 3 pieces started just for myself with colleagues JMU and other institutions in America.
The weekend has proved to be a series of “look both ways” as well. After picking up Ben in Soweto, I looked around to see how well-loved he was by his family. Cena, his mom, gave him a big hug and told me he had been helpful at her school and a good member of the family. The joking that went on between Tebogo, his same-age brother, and Ben was so typical of 16 and 17-year-olds that I couldn’t help but laugh. Ben teased his little sister, throwing her over his shoulder, and LOTS of little guys came and went to say hello and goodbye. As I drove to the house and then back towards Pretoria, Ben knew the ways around from walking through his neighborhood – a big change from last Saturday when he was still a little unsure of where he was.
After getting a little lost on the return trip (some of my looking around helps me get home, but apparently I need better eyes in the back of my head when I'm leaving Pretoria), we decided to go out for supper at the Ocean Basket. Ben devoured his platter for 2, but managed to have some leftovers to bring home. I ate half of my salad, fish, and chips, but by the time I got home, the ocean meal had turned into a storm at sea and I had an uncomfortable evening and Saturday morning.
The drive home was quiet. Ben served as navigator until we got to the main highway and then he dozed off while I dealt with a car that kept trying to morph into a rabbit. At 2 different points, I had to pull off the road, stop the car and restart it, because the car’s safety alarm went off. All this, after Nico had it checked out by his mechanic who found a crack in something and repaired that. Then, as I approached Pretoria, I got confused again on the appropriate exit, made a series of wrong turns before correcting myself and ending up at the new exit I discovered on my return from Soweto. I stopped at the traffic light at the Lynnwood exit, only to be greeted by the same guy I met the day before who had wanted to wash my wind shield. On Friday, I had asked for the direction to get me home, he helped and I gave him a few rand. On Saturday, he remembered me and I ended up giving a couple more rand. The only way to avoid this sort of thing is to avoid looking at the person approaching your vehicle.
As a result of our adventurous ride home, we decided to postpone our trip to J’burg on Sunday. I really didn’t want to risk another bumpy ride in a car I don’t quite trust. So at 3:30, we walked to the shopping center to pick up some shower supplies for Ben and get some groceries. Who knew! Pic ‘n Pay closes on Saturdays at 3, so Ben got a “tub” (cup) of frozen yogurt and we walked back home to veg out for the rest of the evening.
With a tummy that wasn’t quite right yet, I decided to go to bed early and left Ben with the tv and the internet. Around 1 a.m., I heard Ben start a skype conversation and then a major crash. He apparently broke a glass, I told him where to find the broom, and he cleaned up his mess and then got back on the computer. I fell asleep wondering what had actually broken. This morning, I saw the broken drinking glass in the trash can, walked into the parlor to pick up something, and after feeling something sharp in my foot, realized, he probably couldn’t see too well to sweep last night. In looking both ways in the morning sun, I swept the room again in an attempt to get those tiniest pieces up.
As I thinking about looking both ways before doing something, I’m reminded of a piece I wrote several years ago about critical thinking and multiple perspectives. Remembering that nothing is really as simple as it first appears, I value being able to look at a single person or event, to really take it apart to see the richness that is there. For example, I love having Ben here to get to know him without all his friends or his sisters – just understanding and enjoying him as a person. The same is true for each of the people I’ve met, the questions they raise in their work, the new ways of living and adapting in a new place. But I also think that seeing familiar things, living familiar kinds of experiences with the help of this new place and my new friends enriches and deepens my appreciation and understanding of the people I love and have yet to meet. There’s a real excitement (even when my tummy hurts) to learning more about the issues within my professional field and my personal life.
So, look both ways before you cross the street. You never know what you might find in the crossing!
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