Ahoy blog-followers and other readers on the intertrons! It’s been a while since I’ve updated my blog on what I’ve been doing since I got from the OECD in Paris. Things were a little up and down about where I wanted to live, where I was going to work and the longer-term plans for life. So some of that has been resolved and things are moving ahead swiftly. I’ve been appointed as a Senior Researcher at RESEP in the Economics Department at Stellenbosch University. At the same time I’ve been seconded to the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation Endowment for half of my time to develop a video and coaching-based course to teach Foundation Phase isiXhosa teachers how to teach reading.
This is a really exciting 2-year project that I will be heading up and involving a wide range of Foundation Phase and isiXhosa experts and film professionals. A slightly-outdated (soon to be updated) overview of what we want to achieve in the course can be found HERE. If you know any isiXhosa early-grade-reading experts please also email me with more information.
For this project we are looking for a super-organised Project Administrator to work with myself and the Project Manager as we develop the course over the next 2 years. The link to the job description and application portal is here: http://agof.erecruit.co.za/candidateapp/Jobs/Categories/Project_Office/ea53aba45375451695c82c473eeec9f8
Please forward this to any isiXhosa Home-Language potential applicants you may know. I am open to adjusting the scope of the position based on the skills and expertise of the successful applicant, but it would definitely involve running the administrative side of the project (book-keeping, logistics admin, liaising with service providers etc).
Nic
Nic Spaull 
Looking forward to more frequent blog updates.
Regards Elze
Great project. Would love to follow the updates. PLEASE contact Mike Hart at Reading to Learn South Africa. He works extensively with lower quintile schools across KZN and parts of Africa, and is now branching into the WC. His team have developed a programe that trains foundation phase educators on pedagogic aspects of reading and writing (in mother tongue too). It is a programme that also narrows the performance gap between weaker performing students and stronger performing students AND offers differential scaffolding which is so important for migrant students in schools in South Africa where their mother tongue is not accounted for. The programme was developed by some top class educational linguistics at the Sydney school which is the leaders in genre theory and systemic functional grammar. They already have training video’s for teachers as well as teaching material so if you want to avoid re-inventing the wheel, they are the people to get hold of. Some of their teacher trainers are isiXhosa and isiZulu teachers. Their programme is also SACE accredited.
Hi Tracey, thanks, yes I have already met Mike Hart and got the RTL resources from him. I definitely don’t want to reinvent the wheel but am frequently finding that the ‘best’ of what is out there is not comprehensive enough, or sequenced properly, or of a high-enough quality to expect it to change teachers knowledge and practice.
Hi Nic
I know someone who might be interested, but just want to check, how crucial is fluency in isiXhosa for this role?
Best wishes,
Kirstin OâSullivan
Education Programme Officer
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Hi Kirsten, I would encourage them to apply anyway. It is definitely a benefit but if the absolute best candidate by a long shot isn’t isiXhosa HL we may consider them.