News from Dinoto July 2009: School Reopening, Dinoto's newspaper, Heald Street Garden, Election of new SGB, Peermont funds

School reopening


After the June examination, the pupils (and the educators) deserved a break: the holidays!
This meant three weeks no school, no homework or classwork, except for the grade 12 learners who had to attend their holiday classes for two weeks.

I used this time to search with them for bursaries for their future studies and made a little exposition for them (see picture).



Then on the 20th of July the school reopened.

Dinoto's newspaper

On the first school day after holidays the first issue of the "Young Stars News", the new Dinoto school newspaper was sold.

The newspaper team sold nearly 150 papers and by this raised money for the school. Congratulations!
And they are just working on the next issue!


Heald Street Garden: Dinoto becomes green

Dinoto started a school garden project working together with different stakeholders like the eco-club of the school.
The first step was made by the staff planting spinach seeds on the first bed and they are growing well!
The name of the garden is "Heald Street Garde". Look at the picture and you know why!


Election of new SGB

SGB means School Governing Body. The SGB consists of representatives from the parents, the learners, the teachers, and the nonacademic staff.
It was time to elect the new SGB-members. So now Dinoto has its new SGB members! See our ne chairperson below.



Peermont support

Last but not least Dinoto gets a big chance to get prominent support in the future due to the successful application for support from the Peermont entreprise.

After a hard long working phase over several months, different presentations and the hand-over of a long school report - putted together by the whole staff during a brainstorming session at the weekend - Dinoto got finally a positive answer. This means of course a lot of work and new challenges for Dinoto.


Mr. Shongwe - maths and science teacher - had the honor to give this positive news to the staff at the 27 th July (which was also the birthday of the principal!) during break time.

With this good news I want to close this blog for today.
More news soon.

Best regards
Sibusiso

News from Dinoto June 2009: June examination, Impala funds and B-Ball

June examination

As the principal has mentioned in his greetings for this blog, Dinoto is in the examination period. This means every day some examens are written. For the grade 12 it is of course more serious because the June examination is something like a pre-test for their final exammination and the examination is already counting (to a very small percentage) for their matric. But of course all the learners are excited about the examen. The examination will go on till the school's closing day at 26 June.

This means you can see everywhere at Dinoto at the moment hard-working students who are studying for their tests:






And when they are not learning they are having their examens. For this they are grouped together at different venues at Dinoto. E.g. the classroom of Mr Sikhosana and me is now "occupied" by some learners from grade 10 and 11:



So "Good Luck" to all Dinoto pupils!



Impala funds

Impala Platinum is a big entreprise in South Africa. Check their homepage for more information. And this company works together with Dinoto. They were givining funds to Dinoto to improve the scientific laboratories. The school is very happy about this and very proud of it. So Dinoto was very glad that the responsible people from Impala were coming to visiting Dinoto. So the school got the chance to say: Thank you! The Educators presented the new equipment which was bought thanks to the Impala funds. So Mam Nyakane presented the Smart Board:



You do not know what is a Smart Board? Then check their homepage. In short: The Smart Board allows innovative teaching. The teaching board becomes an interactive platform where the pupils can discover together with the educators their subject from a new perspective.

Beside this hightech-teaching-equipment it was also - thanks to Impala - possible to supply the laboratories with essential classical teaching-material. For example Mam Nyakane shew the molecule model to the present representatives from Impala, the district and the municipality:




Also electric motors and microscopes were bought.

Finally the school said thank you to Impala by a wonderful speech from Duduzile Dlamini (Grade 12), a very talented learner who just interrupted her writting of her June exmanen for ten minutes to hold the speech:




So in the end the whole event was a big success. And the educators were very happy that everything went well as this lovely picture shows:



Basketball-game

Last but (for me) not least the Dinoto Basketball team played a game in Kwa Thema, a township near Springs. It was our first real game. This means it was not a streetball game(3 vs. 3) as the last time but a real 5 against 5 game with four quaters with 15 minutes. And it was great fun! We are getting better and better. Unfortunately we are stopping training at the moment due to the examination. Anyway our game was nice. We are playing like Bafana Bafana (the South African soccer team): very ambitous but always loosing!
But the same as Bafana Bafana we try to improve!



With these impressions I want to close this news-post for today and want to motivate all of you to post you experiences with Dinoto.

Best greetings

Sibusiso aka Jan

Greetings from the Principal

Hi, to all our former learners. I hope that you are all doing well and always think of us here in sunny South Africa.

What an exciting experience it is for me. At last we will be able to keep in touch and share with you all our news. Thanks Jan for the brilliant idea and all the work you put into it.

It is going well with us and we are now moving into our winter period. In about 2 weeks time we will be starting with our mid year exam.

I want to apeal to all of you to keep in touch. We plan to get on a monthly period post to this page from learners, educators and myself, so please write to us and let us know.

Looking forward to your responce.

Salani Gathle, goodbye, totsiens

Opening of the Former Dinoto Pupils and Volunteers Blog

Sanibonani,

this is the opening of the Former Dinoto Pupils and Volunteers Blog. All former pupils and volunteers are invited to post information and photos about their year at Dinoto. We want to build up a network to stay in contact and give future pupils and volunteer the chance to get infos about Dinoto.

As an example let me start:
I am Jan Lauer aka Sibusiso and at the moment an assistant teacher in Dinoto (In this picture you can see me with Mam Madisha who is teaching English).


















I enjoy my time here - it is the best time in my life!
I assist Mr Sikhosana in teaching English. Further I opened a basketball team. I will stay in South Africa till March 2010. At the moment a lot of things are hapening in Dinoto. But this will be written in a newsblog. At the moment two other German learners are here at Dinoto.

I am looking forward to hear from you expierences at Dinoto and look at your photos.

Greetings to all; hope to read your post soon!

Sibusiso