Day 117

Beautiful statue at Rhode Island School of Design

As an art teacher you see a different side of students from other teachers.  Also, with small classes it is easier to get to know them, and some students I have taught for 5 or 6 years, so I have watched them grow from little eager grade 6 'babies' into 17 and 18 year old 'adults'.  So a deep affection is built up over the years.  I absolutely love my art classes, particularly Monday and Tuesday afternoons, with the older students, my A.A. Milne characters.

In South Africa, my teaching experience was very different, but I loved the children all the same. 

Mrs Ntombezinhlanu Dwane was the first black principal, after two white men, at Nombulelo Secondary School, a black school where I taught English and Art for 10 years during the height of the apartheid regime in the 1980's.  And where I was taught, so much, by my students, and by Ntombi Dwane.  When I heard the news of the car crash which killed her and her beloved husband, Bishop Sigqibo Dwane, on 2 July, 2006, I was heartbroken.  I have never met anyone before or since, with such integrity of spirit, such high ethical standards.  She was a truly fearless individual.  Through everything we went through in the 80's in South Africa, she remained strong and brave and a true friend and mentor.  She awarded me the prize of most dedicated teacher one year at the Nombulelo awards ceremony, and it was one of the proudest moments of my life.

She once told me that she really enjoyed having white teachers on her staff because "white teachers really like their students, and are a good example to other teachers".  And I identified so strongly with her, that I once forgot I was white, when we were on the way to a funeral of a white official in education, as I remarked to Mam Dwane and the other teachers in the car, "But you know, we will be the only black people there!"

I found this photograph, beaten up and peeling with age, of another person who had an abiding influence on my life, my friend Trish.  Here we are at about 6 years old (I have a front tooth missing, which is the clue), on Dalebrook beach, the scene of many of our happiest moments.  (Tim has done his best and cleaned up the image with his wondrous photoshop abilities, but I liked the one he did in black and white, which still shows the age.) We two were inseparable friends, and loved one another with a deep and pure love, which lasts still, although the thread is stretched over many continents and numerous years.  I am glad to have known such affinity.