A set of readers, written by teachers, will reach about 160 000 learners throughout South Africa
Jubie Matlou
Road safety awareness is one subject very close to Alice Segola’s heart. This is not surprising because this is a subject that affects many of her pupils at St Ann’s primary school in Atte-ridgeville, outside Pretoria.
When the Department of Education invited teachers in Atteridgeville to write elementary readers on any subject in African languages for grade one to grade three learners, Segola and 45 other teachers jumped at the opportunity to try their hands as authors of education material.
Written in Sepedi, the 20-page or so Dinamelwa came out as the best overall winner in the current series of 10 Iwisa Education Programme readers.
“I was very excited to learn earlier that my manuscript has been chosen for publishing but I was completely overwhelmed during the awards when Dinamelwa was voted the best overall winner of the series,” says Segola. All 10 readers are written in African languages
Dinamelwa brings with it the 25 years of teaching experience that Segola commands. She says it all began with a cartoon-type pamphlet she was putting together for her grade three class.
“When I began to write a pamphlet about transportation, its various modes as used throughout the times and developments in the use of road signs, it was all meant to be an illustration I was going to use for my pupils in class.
“Things took a serious turn when the Department of Education invited teachers to submit manuscripts for possible publication. I just took a chance I never thought that one day I would have my name associated with a published book that is prescribed in schools.”
Segola says it took her four months to complete the manuscript before it was sent for editing.
This initiative was conceived when a group of Atteridgeville teachers approached Genfoods to supply their schools with a batch of readers. Genfoods turned down their request, but their Iwisa Education Programme then proposed the publishing of manuscripts in African languages authored by the teachers themselves.
As a result of a partnership between Iwisa and the Gauteng education department the project was put into place. The Department of Education conducted a series of workshops and seminars that walked potential authors through the dos and don’ts of writing readers for elementary learners.
In less than a year more than 46 manuscripts were submitted for assessment. The Department of Education established a committee to oversee and evaluate the manuscripts. Language experts from the University of South Africa were also drawn in for editing purposes. Ten manuscripts exceeded the required threshold.
An illustrator was commissioned to translate the content into pictures, and the printing press was ready to churn out a few thousand copies of the readers for retailers’ shelves.
A statement from Iwisa says the inscriptions in the series “represent ownership, ability, achievement and, above all, a clear statement of worth and recognition … through partnership with the Department of Education, [they] promote the personal and professional growth of the educator and by extension the learner, at the level where it counts and makes a difference actual classroom practice. Each reader is a potential lesson in itself.”
More than 2 600 learners across the three grades in 15 schools will receive readers in their own languages. Sets of readers were written in Sepedi, isiZulu and Sesotho.
The Iwisa Education Programme reader series is one of the several pilot projects funded by Genfoods to support education throughout the country, including Khayelitsha in Cape Town, East London and the Gauteng townships of the Vaal Tri-angle and Soweto.
George Sebulela, as Genfoods marketing executive, heads the group’s education initiative. Sebulela says the series of reader projects makes a “distinction between ‘cheque-book philanthropy’ and hands-on involvement in matters of social commitment in a quest to create an enabling environment that provides resources for the learners it increases the personal and professional capacity of the educators.”
The Iwisa educational programme intends to reach 160 000 learners in 800 schools throughout South Africa by the end of the year.