School setworks come alive
Grahamstown’s status as the Creative City was reinforced when the National English Literary Museum hosted the new Schools Prescribed Literature Festival recently.
Wholeheartedly welcomed by high school language teachers, the festival received the blessing of the Department of Basic Education in the Sarah Baartman District (formerly the Department’s Grahamstown district).
Schools came from as far as Port Alfred, Bathurst, Kentonon-Sea, Alexandria and Alicedale and those who hadn’t seen it yet were amazed by the state-of-the-art auditorium at Nelm. Mary Waters High School opened the proceedings with a dramatised reading of Gcina Mhlophe’s short story, Transforming Moments. The stage was then set for everyone else that was having butterflies in the stomach. It was time to showcase love, enjoyment, understanding, analysis, criticism and opinions of the prescribed grade 12s English setworks.
Kuyasa Combined School, from Port Alfred, analysed the same short story. P J Olivier did Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18. Nombulelo Secondary School could not be left out, and unpacked the novel that many schools have avoided, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde.
Hendrik Kanise Combined, Nomzamo Secondary, Nompucuko Combined, Velile Secondary were also in attendance. Other writings that these schools presented included Village People by Bessie Head, Captive by Francis Carey Slater. Maya Angelou’s Still I Rise poem was made a hit when Mary Waters’ Alisson Brown, in a red and black dress, had the audience in stitches. She started sitting within the audience, reciting it, and stood slowly, moving from one side of the auditorium to the other, laughing, clicking her fingers, swinging her body, and finishing on the podium with “Still I Rise, Still I Rise, Still I Rise.”
Waldo Oosthuizen and Dampers Bande, English teachers from P J Olivier and Velile Secondary School respectively, were the panellists. They led the discussions, shared their expertise and answered everything that learners wanted to know. Senior Education Specialists Vuyokazi Makubalo and Viwe Pikoli thanked teachers for their efforts in preparing their learners and committing to the betterment of education in the province and South Af- rica. “In 2015 Grahamstown was number one in English, and number two in 2016. It must go back and retain its first position,” said Makubalo, who coordinated the English teachers, encouraging both teachers and learners.
The plan is to grow the festival further in 2018 to include isiXhosa and Afrikaans prescribed literatures. Mzwandile Mayalo, the Deputy Chief Education Specialist in the district liked the idea so much that he even requested permission from Nelm to sell it to other districts in the Eastern Cape. • Zongezile Matshoba is Nelm’s manager of Education and
Public Programmes.