USF Associate Professor Darlene DeMarie Develops Child Care Center in South Africa [09/04/2008]

by Darlene DeMarie

My primary task for my Fulbright year was to create a campus child care center for the University of Limpopo. The university is an historically black institution in the northern, rural part of South Africa. It is only 200 kilometers from one of the main entrances to Kruger Park, where you can see 19,000 acres of wild animals roaming freely, and 30 kilometers from the nearest town, Polokwane.

Although the child care center officially opened on May 5, 2008, we provided the child care for the ANC conference, which took place at the university in December. It was a privilege to be on campus for that historic conference, and it was an experience that I will never forget. We were very close to the main tent, and we picked up our food while the delegates were eating lunch each day. We could sense the tension when the delegates arrived, and the relief and joy when Jacob Zuma was elected peacefully. Singing is an important part of South African’s life, and there was music in the air all four days that the conference was in session.

The child care center's ribbon cutting ceremony marked the end of countless struggles I faced during the year. We had politics that I did not always understand, a society that did not seem to have a concept of child safety, labor union battles over why child care was not free for employees of the university, and numerous construction delays.

It was all worth the effort the moment the first child arrived! Even 13 years after the end of Apartheid, the adults in this region seem to live segregated lives. There still seem to be underlying tensions among tribes and among those who speak different languages. South Africa has 11 official languages. Yet, as you can imagine, none of this was evident among the children. They all played together and did their best to communicate using whatever verbal or non-verbal languages they could. By the third week, they were reciting the English rhymes and singing songs they learned at school. They all played together nearly all day, regardless of age or home language. English was the language that united them.

I was very surprised that the parents wanted the child care center teachers to speak only English to their children. I had imagined that the children would be bilingual, and that their first literacy experiences would be in their home languages. I hired two teachers who spoke the two most dominant black languages in the region. However, in the week before the child care center opened, at the first parent meeting, the parents made it clear that English was all they wanted. By the third week, a parent proudly told me that her child told her to speak English to her at home. My American brain lamented while the South African parents rejoiced!

I discovered that my Fulbright was successful during the spring of 2007. I was teaching the undergraduate early childhood majors the course Child Growth and Learning at the time. I told my students that they were all welcome to come to assist me in South Africa. One student, Brianne Northcutt, took me up on my offer and came to work with me in South Africa for 6 weeks. Her assistance was greatly appreciated, and I also got to have more insight into the type of teacher education that USF gives its early childhood majors. (It was very impressive!)

My Fulbright was renewed, so I will return to the University of Limpopo for 8 additional months. I look forward to continuing my work there. The next step is to develop early childhood teacher professional development for the region’s teachers. Kindergarten (which they call “Grade R”) has only recently been mandated, and there are many teachers without any credentials for teaching children.

There is a lot of work to do to help people to understand that early childhood is a unique period of development and that it has its own body of knowledge and research. I welcome anyone who wants to assist me in this venture. And, any contributions of any type are greatly appreciated.