Teach Me Teach You is a collaborative project between the students at Bedfordveiw Methodist Church Adult Literacy Programme and Molemo Moiloa. The collaboration is born out of an interest in the way knowledge and information is passed between people and how this affects the way people interact with one another.
Every Tuesday evening at the classes, Molemo teaches the students English writing and reading and some communication skills. For the last 5 mins of each class, the students teach Molemo isiZulu and Sesotho phrases.
This reversal of roles brings into contrast the ways in which information giver and information receiver roles indicate a sense of empowerment and relational observation. It opens up questions about the ways in which we learn and the extent to which we feel we have something to teach.
A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary. ~Thomas Carruthers
In these classes, as is evident when juxtaposed in the video, comfort zones are pushed and questions are asked. The bravery of an adult learner can never be underestimated. When we consider the daily interactions and communications we have through written word, from emails to newspaper headlines on roadside posters, daily functioning seems predetermined by reading and writing. And yet as is evident through these men and women, many of whom lead families and jobs, communication is a far more complex human interaction. As they teach, the subtleties of communication are brought to the fore.
