A recent mandate requires school teachers in South Africa to use puppets in the classroom. It’s a fantastic idea but many teachers in rural areas have never seen a puppet, let alone have an understanding of how to teach with one. Given this dilemma, the local schoolteachers approached Thanda for help.

The school teachers explained that their students were unengaged and disinterested in the subject matter they were teaching but when Thanda facilitators came to their classrooms after school, the children were suddenly bursting with energy. Seeing how excited their students became for Thanda spurred the teachers’ interest in working with Thanda to develop ways to make learning fun for their students so we’re doing just that…

Yesterday marked the beginning of our Teacher Workshops – the first of a series of four which help local schoolteachers expand their teaching skills and integrate fun activities into their lesson plans.

The first workshop in our series focuses on (you guessed it) puppets! We cover everything from the role and purpose of puppets in the classroom, making puppets to take back to the classroom, practice using our puppets, and the therapeutic role of puppets. Local Hibberdene resident Hayley Maisch led the first workshop and at the end, each teacher walked away with a number of creative ideas to incorporate into their lesson plans along with five puppets to use in their classrooms.