Township Football #3 - Classroom

After multiple visits to Khayelitsha, it became clear that football was incredibly important for Dumi and the boys. It was the focal point of their days and weeks, and affected their lives in ways far beyond sport alone. Football was the means by which they could re-engage with their education, teaching them values of team spirit and hard work just as applicable off the pitch as on it.

Dumi, their head coach and mentor, has long believed in the power of football to teach life lessons. In his teenage years, he was saved from former bad habits by finding both football and religion at the right time. Since, he has championed the combination of the two, designing football training sessions that link sporting drills and skills to Bible stories and their teachings.

Deep in discussion whilst overseeing a training session, Dumi shared his desire to help more with the boys’ school work as well as their football, frustrated by their overfilled classrooms and lack of appetite for the classroom. Having designed and taught some football-themed English tutoring in Manchester whilst at University years ago, I hurriedly offered my services as a makeshift teacher for the rest of my stay in Cape Town.

It was agreed that I would plan a range of English and Maths sessions, teaching core skills through football themed activities and scenarios. As I began planning, it became clear very quickly that tutoring small groups of 14 year old Mancunians for their GCSE’s would be very different to a classroom full of 11 year old boys from a township.

Dumi has been working with young people and football for 20+ years in Khayelitsha.

For starters, English is their second language, with their native Xhosa (pronounced, Khosa, with a traditional click of the tongue on the Kh) spoken at home and around the community. It’s a beautiful language, and I managed to swap my English teaching for some informal Xhosa lessons from the boys (stay tuned for a mini dictionary later on).

Secondly, the lack of resources (lesson plans, classroom equipment, even pens and paper!) and experience (1 year of part time tutoring 7 years ago…) posed significant challenges, not to mention my total ignorance of their current schooling system and capabilities. I had very little idea of their level of English, but what I could be confident of was their knowledge of football. I planned accordingly, leaning on the only ‘resource’ I had (ie, something I possessed in a large quantity), my football shirt collection, to be the basis of the classes.

The lessons would be taught at a community centre a few minutes walk from the football ground, a small building filled to the brim with local children of all ages, packing the daycare centre, classes and music rooms whilst waiting for their parents to return from work for the day. I arrived to an enthusiastic welcome from the younger children in daycare, a gaggle of uniformed pre-school kids clinging onto my legs and clothes as I was guided towards our classroom.

The square, white walled space was sparsely filled, housing an old piano, broken pool table and a small desk. After a bit of borrowing from other rooms (the highlight being the tiny, colourful plastic tables from the daycare), we had compiled a classroom, and even a whiteboard, but as yet, no suitable pen. A trip to a local Pick & Pay the day before (national supermarket chain) came good for the stationery shop, picking up 20 writing books and 20 pens totalling 220 rand (about £12).

Armed with this budget stationery, ramshackle classroom and 20 football shirts (complete with hangers, of course), the early arriving students and I set about constructing a makeshift clothes rail to hang them on. Stacks of broken chairs formed either side, with half a lamp stand stuck between them, and after a quick game of ‘head and catch’ as a suitable warm up, we were ready to begin.

Stationery and lesson plan templates prepared…

The chosen shirts hanging from their makeshift rail.

After a quick introduction, we began with some language-swapping, 5 English phrases for 5 Xhosa ones. Dumi had already taught me a few pleasantries, and the boys helped me spell and learn the following words and phrases on the whiteboard (one of the coaches Tapelo saving the day by bringing a pen just in time).

Molo - Hello

Cun jani - How are you?

Di pi li le - I am fine

Qondile (*con-dee-lay) - awesome / great

Enkosi - thank you

*the ‘con’ is delivered with a Xhosa tongue click, merged into the ‘on’ sound

[more Xhosa phrases at the bottom of this article]

The aim of the lesson was to get the boys talking and writing about the football shirts, developing their observational and descriptive skills in English. Every student had the chance to choose one of the shirts from the rail, and was then encouraged to write down details and opinions about their chosen jersey, eventually presenting their findings back to the rest of the class.

Shirts from India, America, Ireland, Spain, Wales, Germany, Africa and England proved the perfect classroom prop, their bright colours, varied designs and intricate crests grabbing the boys’ attention as the lesson got underway. It was great to see them so instantly engaged in the activity, and was a promising start for the theory of football-themed teaching.

On a personal level, having collected these shirts from all corners of the world over the last few years, it was brilliant to see them being put to such good use (and the perfect story for anyone who questions my relentless shirt-hoarding in the future).

We then held a vote on the most popular shirt in the room, comparing their respective features and giving evidence for our arguments. Thankfully, the hometown team Cape Town City FC’s beautiful blue and yellow Umbro jersey won the day, narrowly pipping the imaginative Forza India design to first place.

The next phase of the lesson gave the boys the chance to design crests and jerseys of their own. As part of the activity labelled ‘Dream Teams’, their task was to create their own club identity, describing the details chosen to the rest of the group along the way. With clearly a few budding artists and club chairman in the room, the boys came up with an incredible range of designs, team names and mottos.

The boys clearly identified closely with the teams they followed week in week out, whether one of the big SA clubs (Kaizer Chiefs or Orlando Pirates), or a big European team (Barcelona, as ever, the firm favourite). This exercise seemed to tap into that same sense of pride and belonging, with many of the students seeing the wider context of their footballing lives.

A highlight project featured the team name ‘Hope Academy’ with the motto ‘Reaching 4 Success’, and the description ‘local football team takes children and keeps them busy, and so they don’t do the bad things’. Check out the photos for more examples of their projects.

The final activity was Maths themed, using a game of ‘Fantasy Football’ and budget-style challenges. Selecting a 5-a-side team from my roster of priced-up famous players, the students then had to total up their squads, work out the money left over, and eventually pick a communal dream team to sit proudly on the whiteboard.

Maths was never my strongest point, and I’m not embarrassed to admit I may have been sneakily checking the answers on a calculator in my pocket. A couple of the boys followed suit, and despite my initial reluctance to let them, I allowed them to carry on in reward for their ingenuity.

Each activity had kept the boys engaged and talkative, tapping into their passion for football and allowing them to share and present their knowledge and ideas. Having always wondered whether such football-themed teaching would work internationally, it was a great validation for me personally, and it was great to see the boys getting something from the experience.

We finished the class with an ‘energiser’, taking turns to hold the miniature football in a dancing, rotating circle, leading the group’s routine whenever it was in your hand. The boys mercilessly handed me the ball very early on, but seemed to enjoy the lanky, barely coordinated steps I managed, before happily passing it on. As I packed away the football shirts and wiped the dream team from the whiteboard, I was confident the following weeks of teaching would prove worthwhile, and validate the role football can play in global education.

Teaching 5 sessions in total during my stay in Cape Town, to both u12 and u14 students, I continued to develop this range of lesson plans themed around football, teaching key English and Maths skills in accessible and entertaining ways.

The success of this first stage has encouraged me to keep pursuing this as an ongoing project, feel free to get in touch if you’d like to find out more.