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    Teaching English in Swaziland: Essays on the Life of Gordon James Thomas
    Teaching English in Swaziland: Essays on the Life of Gordon James Thomas
    Teaching English in Swaziland: Essays on the Life of Gordon James Thomas
    Ebook91 pages1 hour

    Teaching English in Swaziland: Essays on the Life of Gordon James Thomas

    By Sarah Mkhonza

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    The book, Teaching English in Swaziland: The Life and Days of Gordon Thomas is about Gordon the teacher and mentor.His life at Manzini Nazarene is one that all his students remember as filled with great moments of teaching and learning. In this book his ideas on teaching are written about in a semi-fictional manner that enables readers to think about their own teaching.The dedication he brought to the teaching task has been analyzed to bring out how he taught composition, poetry, drama and the novel. His students in the class of 75 called him Chaucer. We thank York University and the Church of the Nazarene for making it possible for such a great teacher and thinker to sow into our lives. His students have grown to be professors, ministers, ambassadors and many other important careers that are serving the nation of Swaziland in wonderful ways. The life of a Christian teacher is something that can never be replaced in the lives of students. Gordon will be remembered in all the countries around the world where he worked for all that he gave.Gordon Thomas died of melanoma cancer in 2006.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateDec 14, 2011
    ISBN9781468530117
    Teaching English in Swaziland: Essays on the Life of Gordon James Thomas
    Author

    Sarah Mkhonza

    Sarah Mkhonza is a writer activist and Professor of English. She has taught English Language and Writing at the University of Swaziland, Saint Mary's College (Notre Dame), Michigan State University and she is now a Senior Lecturer at Cornell University. She has published two novels and many short stories, poems and plays in both English and SiSwati, the language of Swaziland. Her novel, Pains of a Maid won the MacMillan Pacesetter Boleswa Award. She was a writer in residence in Ithaca for the years 2006 to 2008. Most of her writing explores life in Swaziland. In this book she is writing on the teaching method of Gordon James Thomas who taught in Swaziland at Manzini Nazarene High School.

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      Book preview

      Teaching English in Swaziland - Sarah Mkhonza

      © 2009 Sarah Mkhonza. All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

      First published by AuthorHouse 9/25/2009

      ISBN: 978-1-4490-1514-5 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4685-3011-7 (ebk)

      Printed in the United States of America

      Bloomington, Indiana

      This book is printed on acid-free paper.

      Contents

      PREFACE

      CHAPTER 1

      CHAPTER 2

      CHAPTER 3

      CHAPTER 4

      CHAPTER 5

      CHAPTER 6

      CHAPTER 7

      REFERENCES

      PREFACE

      You will find the right teachers. Or they will find you. You will learn something from everyone you meet, but some special people will be great teachers to you. Sometimes they will teach you on purpose, sometimes accidentally. Relationships are difficult at times, but there are great lessons to be learned from them. Please be extremely patient with yourself. Please be kind and gentle to yourself. Remember that your intuition is always available to you if you just listen.

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

      For those of us whose lives were touched by the life of Gordon James Thomas, it has been hard to let his memory go unrecognized. I am sure that many people have debated about what it is they can do to make his life worthwhile. I know that there have been many tributes from those who knew him. There has also been a scholarship established in Minting Holliness in his honor. It is those of us who followed in his footsteps and became teachers who have felt extremely indebted to him. It has become incumbent on us to make the world know that Gordon was not just a teacher; he had the anointing to teach. He touched our lives and literally turned them around. He was a contagious teacher and Christian.

      In this short book, I want to tell how Gordon, the teacher, impacted our lives at Manzini Nazarene. I am trying to recount experiences from thirty years ago. Each time I revisit them, it is as if it was yesterday. The joy of having had a good teacher and mentor overtakes my feelings, and I start wondering if we will ever do justice to the work that Gordon did at Manzini Nazarene and later at Endzingeni.

      In the first chapter, I give a brief description of the language-teaching situation in Swaziland. It is important to note that English is not taught the same way around the world. It is the international examinations that have some similarity. In my telling, I hope the reader will be able to picture the world of the teacher of English language and literature that Gordon Thomas was in his first days as a teacher. He had just graduated from York University and had answered the calling to go and be a missionary. At the age of twenty-three, he was among the youngest members of staff at Manzini Nazarene. He taught us English language, English literature, and religious knowledge. In all these subjects, we did extremely well.

      It is because of the dedication of our teacher, Gordon Thomas, that I feel compelled to write this monograph, and other teachers can read it and try to answer the call of teaching with the same dedication which Gordon Thomas answered his calling to teach.

      To my fellow classmates, the class of ’74, I present the one and only Chaucer. As a library prefect, I was known as a teacher’s pet. I take this honor to reflect what it was that Chaucer meant to us, and I hope to you as well. To those of us who later considered Christianity seriously, we have never felt we could even come close to what he was to students, by this I mean both academic and spiritual mentor. We just have to live with the challenge of mentoring students and not judging them. It is hard, but it can be done. That is what happens when other people set the standards of performance too high in any area of life. We just have to keep on keeping on. The climb is steep, but we decided to try. I honor those of you who took up the teaching profession in whatever field, because I know that you were influenced by what our teachers did. Long live the schoolteacher!

      CHAPTER 1

      TEACHING ENGLISH IN THE SWAZILAND CLASSROOM: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE INTRODUCTION

      The advent of the English language in Swaziland dates back to the time of the missionaries and the early colonial settlers. The earliest missionaries got to Swaziland in the nineteenth century. By this time, English had already been established in the Union of South Africa. It was a period of conquest, which brought European culture to southern Africa. Early encounters with the British were with people such as Sir Theophilus Shepstone, who was requested by the Swazis to mediate between them and the ill-behaved gold prospectors often referred to as concessionaires because they had come to the Swazi king

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