Dispatch: Traveling Back in Sighet

I am steeped in the Holocaust, but most of it comes from my mother’s side of the family. Her father was in hiding in Amsterdam for a few months and escaped because of his blue eyes and light hair. As a child I always imagined that he was sitting at a bus stop and Hitler walked by and didn’t realize he was Jewish.

When I was 8 or 9, I read my mom a book report on the Upstairs Room, a book about a girl in hiding, and she sat on the couch listening and crying. She has read a lot of historical and painful books about World War II and the Holocaust. We joke that she likes to read about trauma, but it is not really funny. I think it is a search for self and a desire to reconnect to past and childhood. The truth is that most of the books she reads are passed on to us and so literature is one way that I have been immersed.

I grew up hearing stories about Papa Henry, my dad’s father. About how he left Hungary in 1928 and didn’t have enough money for passage from Hamburg to New York so he had to stow away in a tiny crowded hold and his cousin had to pay the rest of the fare when he arrived. About the special suit he spent too much money on to look good at a wedding in Brooklyn. We heard about his butcher shop in Harlem, where he was one of a few owners to hire African-American people in the thirties and forties, and the business as it moved to Boston – and my dad, who broke his nose when he slipped pushing meat on racks and clearly didn’t inherit the butcher genes.

But it was when the plans for our trip to Sighet, Romania, the town where my grandfather was born, began to take hold, that the story of the Blank family came together for me, as a descendant and as a filmmaker. I went to Sighet because the town was having a commemoration weekend to honor the 70^th anniversary of the deportation of the Jews who lived there, including my family. Over 100 people came from the U.S., Israel, and Canada.

Sighet is located in northern Romania, near the Hungarian and Ukrainian borders. 40 percent of the town was Jewish, and it was a thriving intellectual and cultural community. Several important Talmudic scholars began their studies there.

My journey into the past started before I arrived in Sighet, with a series of emails from my Dad’s first-cousin Freddie in Israel:

Your grandma's last name was Wieder. She went with the transport to Auschwitz on May 18, 1944.

I always knew she died in the Holocaust. But there is something different to learn of her exact journey and the place where she died. It moves her from a group of unknown six million to a person, a picture -- to family. Since my visit to Sighet I have seen the train tracks that took her away in the transport.

And the second email (all of these people are uncles, aunts and cousins):

The following souls were deported on that fateful June 18:

- Sheindel (my great-grandmother)
- Julia + Mendel + Children
- Ethel
- Moishe (my grandfather's brother who I never knew about)
- Simon - Saved and liberated
- Adolph - Saved and liberated
- Jontel + Ester + 2 sons - Jontel gave his last piece of bread to Simon and died one day before the liberation
- Esther was taken earlier from Debrecen and liberated
- Avraham and Itzhak were taken to forced labor work lumber camps in the Ukraine. Both escaped, only Itzhak died immediately thereafter from Typhus]

The story is starting to unfold. We must get as much info as possible from those that remember and can tell.

********

It’s funny, in my profession you spend a lot of time filming, taking pictures and then you get to the end of something and realize you haven’t taken any photos. The other day, I saw a photo and realized quickly that it captured my entire week.

Taken by my cameraman and friend Felix Seuffert, it is an image of a memorial in the cemetery in Sighet that contains soap made from the bodies of people cremated at Auschwitz. In the photo, the memorial is in the background and in the foreground is Felix’s tripod.

Felix and I have worked together before on my Schools That Work series, traveling to rural and sometimes remote parts of South Africa. But we had never traveled this far together.

The week started in the airport in Munich when Felix met my parents for the first time and ended at the train station, from which thousands of people, including my relatives, were packed into cattle cars and taken away.

The weekend was full of incredible events and charged with the energy and love of those who gathered to remember. As my mom said, it felt as if we were family. I was moved by so much -- praying at synagogue, listening to a klezmer concert, standing with extended family in front of my great-grandfather Aaron’s grave, the way people opened themselves up to me and my camera, and hearing stories of the past and present.

Sitting in the balcony on Shabbat in the only synagogue left in Sighet, my mom and I prayed as well as we could, with a little help from the women on either side. I have conflicting feelings about the separation of men and women at Orthodox synagogues, but sometimes it is special. Over the balcony, we could see my dad, wearing the kepah I bought him in Jerusalem and the tallit my mom’s father used to wear. Friday night was the first time I cried, sitting there, thinking that my grandfather and great grandfather had prayed in this town and in a synagogue that is no more.

Once the weekend ended and my family left, I had two days in Sighet on my own. It was when things got quiet that I could breathe and delve even more deeply. We didn’t have anyone left to interview and we could spend time capturing the space – the space of today, thinking of how to use it to show yesterday.

Johnny Popescu, our guide, told us stories about people being herded into the ghetto and a wall being built in the middle of a street so former neighbors, Jews and Christians were no more. We interviewed two women in their 80s who remember when the Jews were pushed into the ghetto and the gendarmes roughly leading women and children to the train station.

Johnny told us that he sees the city in 3-D. When he recalls the history of Sighet, he can see the synagogue and yeshiva buildings. The Jews, he says, are the missing piece of the puzzle that is Sighet. Only about 80 Jews live there now.

We returned to the cemetery where I could leave Felix to film and I could roam. I found one gravestone from someone who died in 1935. Below, his family had added 5 people who had died in Auschwitz. Then I moved on to my great grandfather Aaron’s grave.

Finally, we returned to the train tracks. The first time we went, it was a night vigil. Rows of candles lined the tracks, a survivor told his story in Yiddish, and we sang. This time I was alone. Not literally as Felix was filming and people were waiting for the train. But alone.

********

Once we raised money, I asked Felix to come and film. I wanted to bring someone who is talented and creative, but also someone who understands my process and could appreciate the complexity of the shoot as it combined the personal, emotional and professional.

Then I paused and asked my dad, “Will it be strange that he is German?” He told me not to over think it. So of course I asked Felix, “How do you feel about coming?” As you know, the answer was yes.

I reread Elie Wiesel’s Night and asked him to as well. Elie Wiesel is the most famous descendant from Sighet, but this film will not tell his story.

So amidst my journey of family history, connections, reunion, sorrow, and work, was Felix’s journey. For some reason, it has been easier to write about his than mine.

In school, Felix was steeped in Holocaust history. What is most interesting to me is that in Stuttgart, where he grew up, he didn’t know any Jews. So the history was there, but not the people. Now he was thrown not only into a Jewish community, but a community who came to honor a painful past that he is connected to, though not responsible for.

I am not Felix and I don’t know exactly how he feels, but based on our conversations and the ones he had with my parents, I know it was an emotional and intellectual journey for him too. But I am not in his head, so what I tell you here are my experiences of having him there.

On our first day, on a bus tour of the region, we pulled people aside for short interviews. 75% of the people there were from Israel so I did a lot of interviews in Hebrew. I only understood some. When we interviewed one woman, she said she was going to tell us what her Abba always said. Then she raised her fist, and said “Revenge, " and continued to speak in Hebrew. As I heard her pain, I also thought of the person behind me.

I wasn’t going to tell him. I felt uncomfortable and at the exact same time he said he didn’t need to know and he didn’t want it to affect his work. A couple hours later, he asked again. “I assumed she was talking about me,” he said. So I told him. Felix and I were not alive during the Holocaust; we are not perpetrators or victims. But it is our inheritance.

On that same bus ride, another woman told me stories and cried. She also asked about Felix. It was only a couple hours into our time in Sighet. I told her that he was a thoughtful person and that if she had questions about his feelings about being here that she should ask him. She told me she wasn’t sure she was ready. I know that many people carry the Holocaust deep inside them, but I hadn’t realized until then how present it is for some people, how continuously painful and sometimes paralyzing. Her pain at that moment prevented her from talking to a young German man. Perhaps her pain simply prevented her from talking in general about this moment and her feelings. But all of our conversations left her on the edge of tears. I would soon get there.

Throughout the week, some people thought Felix was Jewish, some weren’t sure, others knew. Several asked me how he was feeling; others said that they had talked with their family about his experience.

The official head of the Sighet Jewish community, Mr. Marcus, told us that he doesn’t like to speak German because of what they did to the Jews. So when he asked me where Felix was from I said, “So Felix, where are you from?” He easily replied Stuttgart and there was no animosity from Mr. Marcus. Maybe another moment when I worried too much.

After we finished our interview with a Holocaust survivor, he disappeared quickly and I thought it was because he was upset. I cried because of what I had just heard and because I wondered what he had just heard. Then he appeared, fine. Another moment when I worried too much perhaps. Neither of us, at that time, was ready to talk about the interview. Sometimes there is too much and nothing to say.

There were many amazing moments. Felix driving nine members of the Blank family to the cemetery and then filming the story of our past. Felix, with my Dad, at Friday night Shabbat services. Felix sitting at Shabbat dinner with my family. The moment that night at the train tracks where he understood the speech of the Holocaust survivor in Yiddish that I had missed. His connection and talks with my parents, and our conversations about this film and especially about my journey.

And the above photo, which, in one image, defines my time in Sighet.

*****

I got back to Cape Town on Friday afternoon, I tried to write this on Sunday – perhaps I just needed to rest -- but 3 days later I am finally ready. I haven’t watched any of the footage yet, or translated it, and I can guarantee you that more stories will come. Because while the journey to Sighet is done, the journey of telling the story is just beginning.

Thank you to everyone who donated to make this shoot possible. I am very excited about what will come next. The next phase will be editing a trailer to raise additional funds. As the story develops, I hope to do one or two additional shoots as I begin to edit the film.

If you are interested in contributing to the film, checks can be made payable to the Institute for Educational Leadership. In the memo part, please write Sighet Commemoration Project. Please also write this on the outside of the envelope. If you are outside of the U.S., please contact me at molly@dispatchfilms.com

If you have suggestions of people who might be interested in helping to fund the film, please let me know. You can also refer them to my website www.dispatchfilms.com to view my previous work.

Please mail checks to:

Eileen Fox

Institute for Educational Leadership 
4301 Connecticut Ave, NW
Suite 100
Washington, DC 20008

Dispatch: In Class With Future Teachers

Since the schools project is finished, many of you have asked me “What’s next?”

This year is the 70th anniversary of the deportation of the Jews from the village in Romania where my grandfather is from. It is also the town that Elie Wiesel is from. In May, the town is having a memorial weekend. People from across the world will be there, including a few Holocaust survivors. I want to make a short film that chronicles what happens over the weekend – talking to people about their memories and why they made the trip and telling the story of how a community celebrates and honors a difficult history. It will also be a personal story about my experience of the weekend and reflections about family and history and where that leaves me today.

I am trying to raise $10,000 for the filming and to edit a short clip that I can use to raise additional funds. If you know of any organizations or individuals who would be interested in supporting this project, please let me know. 

Ideally, this would be the first step in making a longer and broader documentary.

************

And now on to the latest Dispatch.

The first time I screen any of my films is always powerful. There are so many unknowns. How will people respond? Which moments or ideas will resound with them the most? And which might upset them or spark debate? How will different people experience the videos? And in the most recent screenings, will they impact their future? That was part of the conversation at the University of Fort Hare last week in East London in the Eastern Cape.

There is a book called, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria: And Other Conversations About Race. I thought about that book when I saw students at Fort Hare sitting separately. In a classroom of 80 students, the white ones were sitting on one side of the room. In another class, there was a smattering of white students amidst the others – which on some unconscious level made me happy. I think about where this separation comes from and what experiences they have had that bring them into that space.

Why do people sit where they do? What does it say about their comfort levels with each other and the way they grew up? I wonder and watch how different racial groups respond to my videos –course on deeper reflection, these responses are far more based on past experience, not on race. There are many scenes in the videos of students eating food, cooked by women from the community. Some are eating with rulers, the backs of cell phones or hands.

Every time this scene came up, the room would fill with laughter. The black students were laughing and the white students were silent. I think the laughter comes from seeing something that is familiar – and the silence comes from surprise, this may be the first time they are seeing this, realizing what school is like for most of their classmates. It isn’t actually about white or black.

Over the week, I started to wonder why I always analyze these things.

Coincidentally, I just had a meeting with a professor who works on race and I got the chance to think about this. As an American I sometimes see race as a proxy for progress and transformation – I look at interaction between races here as a test of how far the South Africa has come since 1994.

I not only notice the separation, but also interaction. I have done a lot of work at the University of the Free State, a historically Afrikaans campus that has undergone major transformation in the last several years. When my cameraman and I go around filming, we are always looking for black and white students sitting together or talking to each other so we can film “transformation.”

Of course I never ask the students questions and I imagine they are not even analyzing their behavior. Do they need to be? Do they have the space to?

Regardless of class, race or seating arrangement, we always have dynamic discussions. I can only share highlights and moments.

Someone asked me, “How do we mold them?” This is not mold like a robot, but shape them into active and thoughtful citizens.

Some were calls to action:

“As future teachers we must think of our own discipline and model, we can’t be late or underprepared. We can’t expect students to do this if we don’t.”

“If we teach kids in grade 1, we need to remember that we are teaching them and trying to get them to grade twelve, not just through the grade we are teaching. We must always think about our power as teachers.”

“We need to push students telepathically and academically.”

This last comment reminds me of a teacher in Limpopo who told me about the importance of the hidden curriculum in addition to the formal curriculum in class.

And then, we got here. “I noticed that the girl in the video spoke very good English,” said one student.

I don’t know if my face registered my shock. I started to answer, but I wasn’t doing a very good job and realized most of the students in the room speak English as a second language. So I asked them.

The first student said that the education system is inherently biased. He said that second language students are at a disadvantage and they are not able to succeed.

One agreed, rightly saying that students in more rural areas are less exposed to English.

But another classmate argued back, “I would respectfully like to respond to my colleague,” he said. “In the location, kids are not dumb, everyone is smart and as a teacher we need to show them the vision. We must teach English. We can’t dwell on kids not speaking English or put out ideas of dumb or smart, we need to push them.”

Six screenings over two days left me exhausted, but one professor brought it all together.

“This is showing what we have been theorizing, teachers with power, as a national builder. These clips show the power and authority that you have as teachers. It all depends on how we use that power. We have the power to build, but sometimes we destroy it. Today we say how to use our power to build a nation. At the first lecture I said, “What are you bringing into the profession?” There were lots of sad stories. But this tells us the positive capital that you bring. We want to build a nation of stories. The message is that these schools CAN. You are one of the important tools to make them CAN.”

I am amazed and honored to play a small part in this.

*******

It turns out I am unable to sell the book directly. For now, you can purchase it at www.kalahari.com.

Dispatch: Can We Fix South Africa's Schools?

Happy 2014!

After two years of work – and several dispatches about the journey -  my book and video series How to Fix South Africa’s Schools: Lessons from Schools that Work has finally been published. I can’t take all the credit, it was co-authored by a university chancellor Jonathan Jansen.

As some of you may know, I visited 19 schools, some with 2221 students others with 600. Whether urban or rural, big or small, the one thing that these schools have in common is that they serve disadvantaged communities and have achieved academic success. These schools are doing well despite hunger, crowded classrooms, lack of toilets and other resources, and sometimes, unresponsive provincial governments.

In addition to telling the stories of these individuals and communities, I tried to understand why some schools just work. It is something that people all over the world are trying to understand. It is what many of you on this dispatch list work to understand every day.

So what are the key strategies? Can these models be replicated? How do we teach principals to be better and more inspirational leaders, make teachers stronger, and urge students to look to the future? One goal of the book is to try to answer these questions. The title of the book is ambitious, but we have to start somewhere.

“There is no recipe for success,” one principal in Soweto told me. It can be simple – good leaders who hold teachers accountable.

I saw a series of factors -- good teaching, extra classes, continuous assessment, and engaging parents. Check, check, check, check.  But it was the essence of the schools, their individual stories that told me more.

And I found that what is revolutionary is sometimes obvious. One principal told me that the main reason her school works is because students are in class on time, teachers are in class on time and they are teaching. The question we should ask is why is this not the norm.

On paper we have policies and we build education systems. Sometimes they work, often they don’t. We use statistics to assess schools, examine progress. We debate about public vs. private vs. charter vs. community schools; about who should be in the classroom and so many other questions, too many to count. But in this whole dialogue, we don’t often hear the voices of those who are in the schools.

And the voices I heard told me stories of schools that shift the paradigm.

I met determined and resilient young people who arrive at school at 7:00 am for mandatory study – and at one school, they arrive at 6:00 am for mandatory class in Romeo & Juliet taught by the principal!

I met teachers who implement concrete strategies and get students to perform calculus with the same energy and love as Shakespeare’s sonnets.

And I talked to committed principals who lead with a philosophy and vision that is felt throughout the school. These men and women fight and sacrifice for their students because they know what’s at stake.

I know we would like all teachers and principals to be like this and all students to be so engaged. We have to remind ourselves that at any great school and at any struggling schools, regardless of how wealthy or poor it may be, there are students who work hard and others who don’t care so much.

At the schools that I visited, principals recognize the obstacles in front of them, but say they just work hard with what they have. Despite bumps in the road and overwhelming challenges, leaders find a way to move forward. Some do this by empowering teachers to be agents of change, others use a combination of love and discipline to make school feel like home, others regularly adapt strategies in order to help students achieve.

In South Africa, all grade 12 students are required to take a series of exams, called matric, in order to pass school. The schools I visited have high total pass rates on these exams – sometimes up to 95  to 100% of students pass. But the question remains, are these students getting good enough results to study further? These principals know that a basic pass won’t take their students very far. Especially when the bar is set so low. You only have to get 35% to pass the matric exams in South Africa. Most universities require an exemption pass -- at least 50-60%.

So all of these principals are aiming for the real prize -- 100% quality passes that ensure further education, better jobs and more hopeful futures for their students. Last year, at Mbilwi Secondary School in Limpopo province, 325 students qualified for university. This year there are 2,283 students at the school in grades 8 to 12.

The principal’s expectations flow down to students. They have been witness to the transformation in South Africa and 20 years after democracy, they are eager to contribute to it. It is not just the leaders, principals or teachers; it is the investment and the strength of these students who push one another.

All the students told me that education is the key to the future. They told me that they want to go to university, they want to be doctors and engineers and lawyers and teachers, but almost everyone also wants to provide for their family and plow back into their community in attempts to change the circumstances.

Their teachers hope to get them there.

So two thoughts:

Just imagine what could happen if we could harness the energy of these schools and spread it across South Africa? How could we replicate the success of these schools to transform other schools in disadvantaged communities that also have limited resources, not only here but also elsewhere? What could that look like if we did the same thing in the U.S.? I know some schools already are.

And perhaps a more exciting idea, given the current success of these schools that work with only a few resources, just imagine what they could do if they were given access to all the resources that are available. Imagine if every student at those schools had all doors open to them. What it would it look like to level the playing field?

I have seen diverse school communities, each with their own stories, but all moving towards the same goal. Teachers who understand how to nurture student potential, and who extend themselves as counselors and parents, as well as educators. Principals who work tirelessly to maintain effective institutions so that teaching and learning can run the way they are supposed to, all with a single focus that their students find a place in the outside world. Finally students with goals, who want to be active members of the new South Africa and transform their community and country.

They know what matters. But I think it is when we all decide that this should matter that the real change begins.

**************

How to Fix South Africa’s Schools: Lessons from Schools That Work is now available. The book includes all 19 videos. You can learn more  read about the book and watch a few of the videos at my new website www.dispatchfilms.com. My TedX talk, which some of you may have seen, is also there.

On Amazon: The digital version of the book is now available on Amazon. The book will not be in stock on Amazon for a few months.

How to Purchase the Actual Book:

If you would like to purchase the book, send me an email and I can work out a bulk order and send you one from South Africa.  Costs would be payable via check or PayPal.

Thanks to you all for reading these dispatches and going on this journey with me. I am now trying to get this book out into the world through screenings, reaching out to interested universities and organizations, and writing blogs and articles. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

Book Release: How to Fix South Africa's Schools

My new book How to Fix South Africa's Schools will be published this week and available in bookstores around South Africa and http://www.bookstorm.co.za.php5-16.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/fix-sa-schools

The book was co-written with Jonathan Jansen, Vice Chancellor, University of the Free State. It includes 19 short videos of schools across South Africa that serve poor communities and are having academic success. I spent a year and a half in 2012-2013 traveling the country to tell the stories of these communities.

Remembering Mandela

I got an email from my friend Miriam last Friday. “We are counting on you to be the eyes and ears for all of your friends back here in the US,” she wrote, “…to let us know what it’s like where you are, where the life and the loss has much more powerful meaning.”

The request seemed daunting. Here is my attempt. In an effort to share the writing, I have included quotes that have struck me for their passion and their insight.

I found out about Mandela’s death from an email from my friend Thea and one from my dad. All I could see of Thea’s was “sorry for your loss,” and I knew who she was talking about. The email from my dad confirmed it. The subject read:  

NYTimes: Nelson Mandela, South African Icon of Peaceful Resistance, Is Dead.

“Mandela is dead,” I shouted to my roommate.

Mandela, some say, has been dying all year. He has been so sick, his deathbed, and so his big presence did not loom large on a daily basis. Some are not mourning now because they say they have been mourning all year, that for them he already died. His impact this week has been far larger than his impact over the last year.

My roommate went off to work and I sat there reading. And reading. And reading. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I turned on the radio, the most accessible and popular communication here and got what I needed in a call in show where people were sharing stories of him, moments when they met him or moments that meant so much to them. I never met him, but in 1990 my parents took me to hear him speak at the Washington Convention Centre. Almost 25 years later, I couldn’t have imagined I would be here, experiencing this moment with South Africa.

When I walked around that morning, I kept staring at people wondering what they were thinking. Of course it’s not like the people at the shop were going to say, oh today is so sad. It’s their job to be perky. But I kept looking.

At the grocery store I pushed the woman at the counter. When she asked how I was I said, “Well it’s quite a day.” Then she asked, “Why? Mandela?” When I answered affirmative and asked how she felt she told me that she was wondering if the country would change and go down hill in any way.

That was bound to be one comment. Over my years here a few young people have said the exact opposite to me. They worried that apartheid would come back once Mandela died. Neither is going to happen. South Africa will continue it’s journey and in that, many people have said this week, try to live up to his legacy.

When I reached my favorite coffee place, I got what I wanted in a conversation with the woman who makes the coffee – who I have known for several months. We talked about how we need to celebrate his life at this moment of death. That he was 95 and this was bound to happen and we need to let him go, just like she let her 80-year old grandma go the week before.

The question I think of now is not only of my expectations of how people might feel, my desire for dialogue, but also how different people feel and mourn. What this has meant to people here. What it has meant for those abroad. For some it is immediately devastating and full of rich meaning, but some struggle to figure out how or what they should feel.

In the last two weeks, I have continued to read everything – news, editorials, a beautiful essay by Nadine Gordimer about how her book “Burger’s Daughter” was snuck into Robben Island so Mandela could read it, a warm and loving obituary by Desmond Tutu. All of this reading and knowing is part of what helps me feel. It has been positive and also an overwhelming barrage, which has rendered some of this coverage and commentary meaningless. Sometimes the more you read, the less it means.

Now when I read the profound statement that Mandela made in court during the Rivonia trial, I skim over it because the more it is quoted the more it loses it’s power to me. If you haven’t read it, I am sharing it here, because of the extraordinariness of the moment.

“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Read several times a day over a week, for me it almost became just words. I wonder if people ever feel that way about the “content of character” section of MLK’s speech at the March on Washington.

Now, it is other things he said that tell me more about Mandela.

I read many personal and opinion pieces too. Several people felt that Mandela’s true and complete self was often quashed in the memorializing of the man, particularly in international coverage.

The issues they remind us of is that amidst discussion about how much Mandela was like Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr., which is quite true, we must remember that he took up a philosophy of violence when he felt like non-violence was not achieving the struggle. This is why he and other comrades started Umkhonto weSizwe --  Spear of the Nation.

There is the myth that without Mandela, South Africa would have erupted into a bloody civil war at the end of apartheid. We cannot know what would have happened. We do know that Mandela was a man of force who chose reconciliation, who staved off violence after apartheid, who chose to talk to his jailers and a hostile government, opting in later years for negotiation over earlier strategies of violence.

Mark Gevisser, the author of a biography about Mandela’s successor Thabo Mbeki, wrote about the message underlying much of the media coverage,”

 “For those of us who consume media, our week was full of content…. But it was also burdened by an overwhelming message: that we, Mandela's children, are his primary legacy, only worthy of his paternity if we live up to his exemplary example. This is a consequence of the way Mandela's legacy has been popularised: the world's embrace of him only as an icon of forgiveness and reconciliation – of love – rather than also as a fierce combatant for justice who turned to forgiveness and reconciliation because he understood it as the best route to the liberation of his people… The pressure of needing to live up to the legacy of Mandela exceptionalism is too much to bear: it can cause us to crack.”

In his writing, my friend Dylan, who works with teachers and who collaborated with me on my film Where Do I Stand?, honored Mandela as a teacher:

“Today we say goodbye to a great teacher… He has taught us all what it means to make choices, to sacrifice for something greater than oneself, to work hard, to laugh and dance, to love our children, to love our land and find love for each other. He has taught us to forgive where we can and be humble in asking for forgiveness when we need to. He has taught us to belong, accept and include. He has taught us to cherish this democracy, not to take for granted what has taken so long to build. He has taught us to share and be kind. And he has taught us that in teaching, we can give all of South Africa’s young children hope, opportunity and the courage to build on what he began.”
 

That evening, I went with my friend Greer to an Interfaith Service in front of City Hall. Right after Mandela was released from prison, he spoke to thousands from the balcony of this same building. The service was quiet as representatives from several religions spoke and prayed. It was both times that we sang the national anthem that really moved me. How amazing it is that I live here. That I am a part of this moment of celebration and mourning. That I am part of this country that is growing and changing, that despite disappointment and corruption, has so many people working to overcome its challenges. And that I have an opportunity to play a small part in that.

Last Wednesday I attended the Mandela Memorial Celebration at the Cape Town Stadium with my friend Bulelwa and her 16-year-old son Khulani. We told Khulani that when he is older, he would remember this day and be glad he was here.

There was a beautiful energy in the stadium, a unified and spiritual sense. A unique moment and an acknowledgement of this amazing man and the country he helped create today. There were inspired speeches and songs. Many who spoke reminded us that the struggle to maintain democracy was not over. That the responsibility to defend the democracy, to live with Mandela’s spirit of reconciliation must continue.

Western Cape Premiere Helen Zille came out singing a Xhosa song before she spoke, first in Xhosa and then English. When rugby player Francois Pienaar, the former captain of the Springboks – who you may only know as Matt Damon – the entire crowd broke into applause. He spoke of the power of sport to unify people and of his special relationship with Mandela. He referred to one of Mandela’s favorite poems, “Invictus,” by William Ernest Henley.

“Our heartfelt thank you, to our spiritual coach and our captain. A flower that blooms in adversity is the most beautiful and rare of all. Madiba mastered his fate. As a nation, we must be the captain of his soul. Our present, our example, thank you Tata.”

Former Minister of Finance who now works in the Presidency Trevor Manuel spoke with incredible passion and used the moment to remind South Africa of the challenges that are left to overcome.

“We are soldiers and we need to take forward the spirit of democracy as Madiba would have wanted…We must take forward the spirit of struggle that Madiba represents in our lives. He leaves us with a spirit of struggle, spirit of self-sacrifice, humility and inter-relationship with the rest of us… Let us take forward the spirit of reconciliation… let’s listen to each other, let’s hear the pain of people who don’t have houses, let’s hear the pain of people who don’t have jobs, let’s hear the pain of people who don’t have access to toilets or water. Let’s hear that pain. Let’s take forward the spirit of reconciliation and as we do it and as we reach out to the other, as we reach out to the people in need we must remember everyday we are acting that way, we can say to ourselves Long live the spirit of Nelson Mandela. Long live. The spirit of Nelson Mandela lives inside us. Inside us. The back and forth chanting continued until he ended with Amandla. And the crowd responded Awethu.”  – Power … to us.

Mark Gevisser was at the memorial for Mandela in Johannesburg where Zuma and Obama and other world leaders spoke (and an incompetent sign language interpreter gained notoriety). It was pouring, the program seemed to be more for dignitaries than for the people, and when President Jacob Zuma was shown on the screen, he was booed, in what some say is democracy at work. A people who cannot communicate with the government choose to speak out in a different own way.

In his article, Gevisser issued a powerful reminder of where the country is today and the work that is yet to be done.

“I am grateful for … the way the earthiness of the crowd's behaviour deflated the notion that we are a special people with a special destiny: the rainbow children of a saintly father. We are not. We are a troubled and fractious country in a tough neighbourhood. We have problems. Who wouldn't, given such a history? And we have leaders who don't do us justice. We need to do something about this. It's a long walk to freedom indeed. Even if we are sad about Mandela's death, we have already looked up from the sombre task of burying him – he is not even in the ground yet – and we have carried on walking.”

The most inspiring speech at the uninspiring event on Tuesday was the one given by President Obama. He pushed people to be accountable to their own behavior, to take action and to not be complacent when they should be speaking out. Quoting Obama here isn’t raw patriotism. On Tuesday night after the ceremony in Johannesburg, many South African’s I know have said the same thing.

With honesty, regardless of our station or circumstance, we must ask:  how well have I applied his lessons in my own life?...  We will never see the likes of Nelson Mandela again.  But let me say to the young people of Africa, and young people around the world …while I will always fall short of Madiba’s example, he makes me want to be better.  He speaks to what is best inside us.  After this great liberator is laid to rest; when we have returned to our cities and villages, and rejoined our daily routines, let us search then for his strength - for his largeness of spirit - somewhere inside ourselves.  And when the night grows dark, when injustice weighs heavy on our hearts, or our best laid plans seem beyond our reach - think of Madiba, and the words that brought him comfort within the four walls of a cell:

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul. 

 Mandela was buried in Qunu on Sunday. I went back and forth about where I should be for the service, if I needed to be watching it outside of City Hall with others or watching with friends or if it was okay for me not to watch, if I had already done enough memorializing and the rest would come and go on a personal level. I ended up choosing wisely, listening to the service with friends in a car on the way back from a night away, where I had slept under the stars. 

Part 2: Journey to Johannesburg

As I go from province to province, I have become very familiar with being guided to a school step by step. “Take the exit, turn right and then call me.” And after the next phone call, “Go straight, turn at the t-junction, and when you see a primary school on your right, call me.” Then a third set of instructions.  A couple of weeks ago, in Katlehong, outside of Johannesburg, I missed a turn and the principal had to come get me and guide me to the school.

Some schools simply exist in an area and for others, that space has meaning. I had only read a little about Katlehong, but this school’s founding, its history and its present are grounded in the space.

Phumlani Secondary School was started in 1993. “It was the last school formed in the area by the previous government,” Principal Shumi Shongowe told me. “There was a fight, a war between the IFP and the ANC, the soldiers that were deployed by the previous government... People were killing each other. There was blood all over. And there was no time even to bury those that were dead.”

Then he paused, looked up and calmly said, “And it is then that this school was started.”

It was a reminder to me of the painful history of this country and the trauma and chaos out of which so much, including this school, has been born.

Many people who work in schools say that uniforms help with discipline and focus, but I rarely hear that the blues and yellows and greens and maroons have any meaning. Surrounded by brutal violence in 1993, Shongowe consciously chose the school colors. Red for the blood that was spilled. White for the hope that remained. “To say,” he told me, “after some time, all this shall be over and life shall go back to normal.”

In 1994, that was a new normal, one might say.

The school has grown from 200 students and a 5 percent pass rate in 1993 to 1,783 students and a 94 percent pass rate in 2012.

These 1,783 learners also find meaning in the uniform. “I call it a uniform of success,” one learner told me. “People who are in jail, not that I’m criticizing, but people who are in jail, they are wearing a uniform of regret. So this is a uniform of success.” The nuance and generosity he extended to prisoners with the use of the word regret struck me. Not violence, evil or wrong, but regret.

Just after our interview with the principal, I casually peered into the school’s log book and amazed that it reaches back to the very establishment of the school and reads like a historical journal:

Sept 6, 1993: There was a national stay away called by the African National Congress and the alliances. The entire work force and the schooling community responded positively to the stay away and therefore teaching and learning did not take place.

April 22, 1994: Due to excitement of the first democratic election in the Republic of South Africa and the usage of the school building by the IEC for elections, education in our school came to a standstill.

May 10 1994: The inauguration of the state president. The whole world came to South Africa as Mr. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was inaugurated as the first Black president of the Republic of South Africa.

My mandate here is to identify keys to success. I often find that while those keys are unique, they really should be commonplace.  One principal only hires teachers who studied that subject in college or university. That seems fairly basic, right? How can a history teacher teach biology? How can an Afrikaans teacher switch to technology, as I saw happen at one school? This too often happens as teachers are moved from subject to subject to fill gaps, despite a lack of training.

In another example, at Tetelo Secondary School in Soweto, Principal Linda Molefe and his staff end the year with a two-day meeting where they create a comprehensive plan for the following year. Acknowledging that plans constantly shift and change once the year begins, he said, “We can start right away because we know where we’re going.”

I always ask about parent involvement because I know it’s a critical factor but often very difficult to achieve. Both principals emphasized that getting the parents to show up wasn’t enough. It was their obligation to teach parents how to be involved, to be clear about what is expected of them.

One principal has created an easy way for parents or grandparents, regardless of their education, to check their children’s progress. It involves simple numeric indicators. “Some of these grannies, they have never been at school… it is your responsibility to try and school them. To say what role are you expecting them to play. And these grannies with the issue of indicators, they also become excited because they can now get involved and give support to their granddaughters and grandsons.”

I have a new word for moments in these journeys that surprise me. I now call them “Acapello moments.” At Phumlani Secondary, a group of boys approached me and asked if I would film their singing group. I was blown over when I heard the harmony that came from the mouths of these boys, the noises they created through snapping and percussive beats.  It was like nothing I had heard before at a school in South Africa. The Soul Singers (as you may have guessed) are an acapello group.

The accapello moment at Tetelo Secondary came at the very end of the day, during mandatory study time for grade 12 learners. Because of the heat, many bring desks and chairs outside. We found one group of about 10 learners sitting under a tree, intently studying physics, debating and teaching one another. They traded off being the teacher, chalk in hand, using the side of a Cell C container to write on.  (If you aren’t in South Africa, this looks like a shipping container and you often find them in townships. They usually have public phones inside. I am not sure why this one was on school grounds.)

The irony was not lost on me that these kids were choosing to learn under a tree in a country where for years children like them had to learned under trees. I shouldn’t speak of it in the past sense, since this still happens in some rural schools.

When I flew back to Cape Town on Friday morning, there was an article in the newspaper about an Education Charter that was recently put forward by the South African Human Rights Commission. The charter offers rules and recommendations to the government on giving quality education to all children. It addresses issues like crowded classrooms, suggesting that pupil teacher ratios not exceed 1 to 40 for grades 1 to 12. It has a series of ambitious deadlines to meet aims for everything from reduced class size to electricity and running water for all schools, to making sure schools have other basic and essential services needed to teach and learn properly.

The Charter is filled with incredible goals to improve education across the country.  I hate to be pessimistic, but I just don’t understand how they are going to fix so much so quickly. At Phumlani, the 1738 students are based in an old primary school building. The principal says he is basically running two schools. At Tetelo, I saw students mopping out their container classrooms in the morning because it had rained the night before and the classrooms leak. In the midst of the cleaning and mopping, some were polishing shoes and straightening ties.

So how will the government build enough classrooms and buildings so these students aren’t packed 65 in a class and don’t have rain dripping on their books? To have actual libraries and labs rather than a lab on a cart that is pushed from class to class.

I remain somewhat doubtful, but hopeful and I’ll wait and see. In the meantime, maybe the government should bring some of these principals to other schools to share their best practices. “There is no recipe for success,” Principal Molefe from Soweto told me. But I think sharing ingredients would be a good start.

Part 1: Journey to Mafikeng

I disappeared in 2012, but I’ve decided to write again in 2013. This dispatch is the first in a series of reflections about education in South Africa. Over the next several months I will be visiting 14 schools in seven provinces across the country. The mission of the Schools That Work project is to create a series of videos that serve disadvantaged communities and are having academic success – or but are having academic success, depending on how you see it. When compared to other schools in South Africa that also serve poor children, these schools are excelling despite. Despite the hunger and poverty of the learners which negatively impacts their experiences in the classroom, despite struggles with parental involvement, despite lack of classrooms and toilets, despite sometimes unresponsive provincial and national governments, and sometimes, despite necessary resources. I was hired to do this project by Jonathan Jansen, Rector at the University of the Free State.

Last year, in Limpopo, pupils were without textbooks for the first half of the year because the government had not delivered the books. And just before the beginning of Matric (school leaving) exams this year, the Minister issued an open letter apologizing to grade 12 students. In it she said, “I know 2012 has not been an easy year for you. I also understand that you may feel I, Minister of Basic Education, have let you down. I apologise unreservedly for all you have been through as a learner.”

It is likely that for many students it would have been a difficult year even if their schools had proper infrastructure and enough resources. They didn’t need school to make life harder. You know things are really bad when the government feels it has to apologize to learners for failing them, for not giving them the education they deserve. And this apology just devastates me. Kids deserve so much more. Governments, education departments, politicians should all be advocating on behalf of students. They should be the good guys. Unfortunately, they often aren’t.

So this week, I traveled to Mafikeng. Mafikeng is a small town in Northwest province. It is about a 20-minute drive from the Botswana border. The first language of most people is Setswana and there is also a significant Indian population. At one school a boy stopped me and asked, “Why don’t you film the Indian kids, we’re here,” and pointed to a group of his friends. I told him we were filming everyone. It was interesting to think about how he sees his place at the school – a school where most students are Black, the principal and one of the deputies are Indian and the staff is very racially diverse. I still haven’t found out why there is such a large Indian population in Mafikeng.

Every time I visit a school, see a classroom, watch teachers and principals, I think about my own experiences. I think we frame how we see all schools through the lens of our own experience as students, as educators, as parents. My cameraman Felix and his soon to be wife are expecting a baby in a few weeks and all this time in the classroom led to conversations about where and how we would want to educate our children. This week after watching a trigonometry class, Felix, and I talked about our failed attempts at solving sine and cosine. I remember the teacher; I remember the class and some of you reading this might have been in it with me. Felix grew up in a small town outside Stuttgart, Germany and no doubt our school experiences were very different. But regardless of the country, trigonometry seems to prevail.

Each school has it’s own feel to it. Some feel warm, some chaotic, some very structured or disciplined, others a combination. The first school we went to has incredible academic success but felt very chaotic – more outside of the classroom than in. I was only aware when we arrived that the school did not fit into the mold of the project, as most of the students there are middle class. I don’t think I have ever been to a school here that is mostly middle class students. Where the challenges include things like Facebook and cell phones. I have been to very poor township schools and formerly all White more resourced schools, but never something like this.  South Africa is full of extremes and one doesn’t often see the middle.

The second school was a warm place. The buildings are physically spread out because it used to be a teacher training college before it became a high school in the 1980’s. The physical plant reminded us of a missionary school with long white buildings of classrooms and nice trees and flowers. But the school no longer has laboratories or a library because they were turned into classrooms for it’s 1441 students. There are 18 toilets for 800 girls and 16 toilets for 600 boys. When I asked the principal what his priority was, he chose classrooms over toilets.

When filming, I try to represent reasons why a school is so successful and often that comes through excellent teaching. In one English class, 9^th graders were reciting Shakespeare’s sonnet Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds,

Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove…

Many made it their own with tone of voice, body, energy, and humor. The teacher affirmed them, allowed the class the space to laugh and clap noisily, and before each student began grounded them by saying, “The stage is yours.” Some of excellent teaching is personality and after filming we talked about how his classroom felt different. Positive and full of joy, and that wasn’t just due to a love of Shakespeare.

At an economics class – if you’ll believe me – we found students almost equally excited. Who knew learning about land, labor, capital, and natural resources, labor could be fun? The teacher brought two students up to the front, had one take off his tie, roll up his sleeves and hold a bottle of water  -- the laborer. The other one remained staid in his uniform, tie and all. He was the boss. Above the chalkboard were photos of Martin Luther King, Obama, Mandela, Malcolm X, Walter Sisulu and W.E.B. DuBois and quotes from Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes. What was notable for me were the diverse notable people who he brought into the space. (It would have, of course, been nice to see a woman too!)

But just because a school has high Matric pass rates, it doesn’t mean that every teacher is going to show such passion and energy. I also saw teachers on the other end of the spectrum – one struggling to control students (as I once did), one who seemed barely interested and others who stood at the front of the class and talked at students rather than with them. I saw young teachers and older teachers, and I know that no matter who they were, they all try and they all care. But I keep thinking about how we define good teaching and what makes good teachers.

One moment in particular sticks in my mind. It was an 8^th grade English class.  As the teacher called student’s names for presentations, she didn’t make an effort to pronounce them or seem to care which face belonged to which name. As she sifted through her cards, she even named the same kids twice. Many students were not ready which I know is frustrating as a teacher. But in the environment in the room was uninspired and felt negative. I wouldn’t have felt supported or wanted to try very hard in that classroom. Why is this worth telling? Well the teacher was white, her students Black and in a place like South Africa where questions of race are still so prominent, these moments are all the more significant for me.

I’ll close on a picture that will make you smile. Picture a group of girls on the edge of a field in funny hats twirling batons and flags. Behind them, on the big field, is someone mowing a lawn. In front them, a team of boys, in bright colored shirts, run in circles around the field. Amidst it all, if you look carefully, you’d find Felix kneeling and lying on the grass in an effort to capture it all.

I love those moments.