About This Episode

I'll be honest - I found today's guest because of a conference theme. And I know that sounds like a strange place to start, but when the theme is "Let's Meet Under the Tree," you just have to stop, don't you?

That's what happened when I came across the Embrace Symposium, happening at St Benedict's College in Johannesburg this month. And it led me straight to Tebogo Maneli - history teacher, DEIBS practitioner, and great podcast guest :)

This conversation goes deep... into Indigenous Knowledge Systems, what representation actually feels like (versus just understanding it intellectually), why language is one of the most powerful tools of connection we're currently underusing, and what it really means to raise children who know who they are.

In This Episode We Talk About

• What Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) actually means - and why every single person in the room carries one
• The "Meet Under the Tree" metaphor, and why Tebogo thinks it might not just be a metaphor
• Why she prefers the word educationalist over transformation practitioner - and how language shapes whether people open up or shut down
• The difference between representation and transformation, and why Tebogo believes in one far more than the other
• What happened when Jude worked alongside a woman in leadership for the first time - and the moment she felt what representation means, not just understood it
• Why white teachers aren't being replaced, they're being invited into a bigger conversation
• The real reason African languages aren't being taken by white students in South African schools (hint: it's systemic, not about difficulty)
• Why parents and teachers are partners in this ecosystem - and how a single positive message home can shift everything

A Moment That Stuck With Me

"We don't know what we do not know. And this is where I think the tree metaphor lives - you didn't even know you were wounded before, right? Through experiencing her as a system, using her indigenous knowledge, you were changed. You were healed in a way that maybe you might not have been before." - Tebogo Maneli

Mentioned in This Episode

The Embrace Symposium 2026 Let's Meet Under the Tree: Using Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Pedagogy as Pathways to Social Healing in Education

📅 4–5 June 2026

📍 St Benedict's College, Johannesburg

This is not a sit-and-listen kind of event. It's practical, it's dialogic, and it's designed so that every delegate leaves with tools they can actually take back to their school community. If this conversation moved something in you, that's probably your sign to look it up.

🔗 St Benedict's College - Embrace Symposium

About Tebogo Maneli

Tebogo Maneli is an Upper School History teacher at Lebone II College of the Royal Bafokeng, based in Phukeng village, North West. With over 15 years of experience in education across South Africa and Mauritius, Tebogo holds a Bachelor of Education from the University of the Witwatersrand and is currently completing a Postgraduate Diploma in Inclusive Education through UNISA.

In 2023, her passion for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in schools was formalised at St Stithians Girls' College, where she became a DEIBS practitioner and went on to convene the DEIBS Cluster in Gauteng - bringing together transformation practitioners from private schools across the province. She has facilitated Teachers' Roundtables for the Apartheid Museum, presented on Girls' Education at St Mary's DSG, and spoken on innovative AI teaching strategies at the 2023 History National User Group Conference.

Tebogo describes herself not as a transformation practitioner, but as an educationalist - and once you hear this conversation, you'll understand exactly why that distinction matters.

Connect With Tebogo

• LinkedIn: Tebogo Maneli

Connect With Jude & Future Smart Parent

• 🌐 www.tomorrowtodayglobal.com/schools
• 📸 Instagram: @judefoulston
• 💼 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/judefoulston

If this episode resonated with you, please share it with another parent or educator who needs to hear it. And if you haven't subscribed yet - now's a good time. We've got a lot more conversations like this one coming.

Welcome to the Future Smart Parent Podcast, a place where my mum explores how to help us kids develop a new set of skills we need to face the future with confidence. I'm Jude Filston, an introverted mum trying my best to raise kids who are happy and confident, kids who embrace all that makes them unique while preparing them for an exciting future that really looks nothing like the world we grew up in. I believe there's a whole set of skills that our kids aren't being taught. These skills will be critical for them to develop in order to thrive in the future. It's up to us as parents to help them develop these skills. The Future Smart Parent podcast provides resources for parents and kids who want to be ready for all the ways in which the future is going to be different from today. We will explore this future together, bringing insights from top futurists, resources from smart people working on making our lives better, and most importantly, storeys of parents who are parenting a little differently, yet very much intentionally for a changing world. So join me as we explore how we can be Future Smart Parents raising Future Smart Kids.

I'll be honest, I came across today's guest because of conference theme, and I know that that sounds like a strange place to start. But when the theme is "Let's Meet Under the Tree," you just kind of got to stop, don't you? You can't, you can't not read more than that. The conference that caught my eye is the Embrace Symposium happening at St. Benedict's College in Johannesburg in June. And today's guest is one of the featured speakers. Her name is Teboho Manele. She is an upper school history teacher. And convener of the DEIBS cluster in Gauteng. And so to have her here on the Future Smart Parent podcast today truly is a privilege. I do have to be upfront with you though, um, to the listeners and to you, Thabojo, I do get nervous having these conversations sometimes.

Thank you for having me, Jude. It's lovely to have these conversations first and foremost. I am an upper school history teacher. I'm based at Lewone 2 College of Leroy Botho King. It's in a village called Phukeng, and born at the end of apartheid, I kind of just saw the nuances in primary school, but I was part of the group that could at least go to school under this new democratic dispensation. I agree wholeheartedly that these conversations need to be had, and I think It's better when they also had, in such a diverse, polarising kind of discussion where we are not the same. And there's almost an assumption that because I'm Black and I'm female, that I won't say something insensitive or something that wouldn't land well. And I don't think that is true. And I think that's part of why I do this work. I do believe that we have almost boxed who can be wrong and who can be right, and it puts us at odds before we even start speaking, right? We're giving disclaimers. So yes, I am a DIBS practitioner. I do prefer to be called an educationalist. I think it just encompasses the fact that I'm a teacher and I do this work.

And doing this work was a happy accident. So it's gonna be fun to chat about that with you in the podcast. But yeah, thank you for having me.

So that's exactly where I want to jump in because On the one hand, you're a history teacher in a South African school who then becomes or is a diversity champion. Like, what is the storey behind that? Because it does feel quite, not on opposite ends, but kind of, you know what I'm saying? Well, I hope you do. How, what's the storey behind those two roles being merged into what you do now?

It's a really good question. I had the opportunity of working in Joburg at an elite, um, private school, and they actually would have portfolios where you would be called a director of transformation. It was a job. You got paid for it and you taught. So there was Tebogo in the classroom and there was Tebogo running this role in the school. And I'll be Frank with you, I've never wanted this job initially. I never wanted the job initially. Mm. I just happen to be good at it. And I think people don't talk enough about the responsibility that comes with this work and these conversations. And I don't think that it's just for Black people. I just think that we are better equipped due to experience to do the work. That's my honest opinion. I think there's a lot of conversations that we need to be having, Jude, with white South Africans about the fragility of being white in this country and to what extent that becomes an impediment to confidently stepping into this work. So for me, it was a job that I had, and I had an incredible mentor and sponsor who, due to her experience, and I always tell her that because she crawled, I can run kind of thing.

Um, there are a lot of people who are doing this work without the title before. And 2014, if we're honest, is where this kind of started for me when Black Lives Matter in America. I mean, the Black Lives Matter movement happened in America and it just spread in on social media. And as a parent, I don't know how old your children were when this happened. Yeah. But it was, it was something out of this world. I had just come back from teaching in Mauritius and I was locuming in another private school when this happened, and I think it disconnected something in education. So whilst I didn't have a title back then, that is where my transformation journey started, or working in diversity and transformation started, 19. So just for context, in private schools, transformation is a job. It is a portfolio that people handle, and it's got to do with employment equity. It's got to do with curriculum transformation. It can do with Courageous conversations. It becomes what the person who has the job makes it, but you are a partner with your head of school. You are a partner with your exco team to make the schooling environment as inclusive as possible with an awareness of where privilege lies.

And I'll talk more about it again as we go along, but I do think that we need to reshape our definition of privilege as a social construct and not a racial construct.

Yep. I 100% agree with you. That is a whole episode or conference on its own, right? I mean, that's a, that's another big topic. Okay. So that, you know, that makes complete sense now that you, you tell the storey and it's, so I've got two questions, I suppose, but let me start with before we go anywhere further, just to give some context to the listeners, I kind of jumped in and introduced the conference or the symposium that I noticed with the Let's Meet Under the Tree. What that conference or symposium is, I don't even know what the difference is, but anyway, it's the full title is Let's Meet Under the Tree: Using Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Pedagogy as Pathways to Social Healing in Education. So obviously that is the full context of today's conversation between you and I and the conference. And I suppose if you could just help us understand what we mean by Indigenous knowledge systems. I mean, I get it. It would never be a phrase that myself, like that I personally would have been able to verbalise, I suppose. I know what it means, but can you help us understand?

I can try, 100%. So for context, I am doing my postgraduate studies in inclusive education. And inclusive education, people tend to think it just looks at children with special educational needs or children who have disabilities or, you know, those kind of things. But what we have come to understand is any barrier to learning is a problem. And in a culturally diverse country like South Africa, some cultures are given dominance in our curriculum over others. This could be due to colonial legacy. This could be due to values that have been assimilated into our own people over time. And what Indigenous knowledge systems talks about, it says, okay, you have how many bodies in the class? So let's say we have 26 bodies in the class. Each body holds its own Indigenous knowledge system. The two of us on this podcast right now, hold to Indigen— Indigenous knowledge systems. This requires us to understand that we are partners in learning. There is no superior, there is no inferior, there is no teacher, there is no learner. There is partnership here. And the values of respect, humanness, reciprocity, dialogue are what dictates if you can communicate your Indigenous knowledge to me.

What I want your viewers to fully take meaning from it as my academic interpretation of IKS is that you are a system that educates no matter where you go. And in a country that doesn't always give certain systems the platform to voice themselves, it is up to us educators to instil a pedagogy that brings all 26 bodies to life in the class.

Yeah. That's a big responsibility. The education system, teachers, curriculum, it's already so overloaded. And I can only imagine that that's, as soon as, as yourself or any transformation person in, in responsible for trying to lead transformation. I can imagine the pushback is, is strong by a lot of teachers because they're feeling, well, this is just another thing added onto our list of things. They perhaps not fully understanding the benefit to them as educators and their class. When suddenly you have got 5 of those children out of the 26 being seen for who they are and for what they bring to the class, all of a sudden makes such a difference to everything, to who they are, to their learning, to what they and how they contribute. So I'm by no means suggesting that this is an easy road to walk, but I do think it's a fascinating conversation to have to, to open minds and just to create, I suppose, just different ways of thinking, right, to help us understand. So let's, and again, I mean, these are, these are massive questions, I know, but so obviously Meet Under the Tree being the theme, that's not just the metaphor, right?

We know that the tree is one of Africa's kind of oldest and most widespread, I suppose, institutions. Mm-hmm. Which is, is just, it's beautiful that, you know, I would love to see the, yeah, the actual conference happening under a tree rather in a conference room because that's what we're talking about, right? Like, because there's something, there's something about when people meet under a tree, literally sort of ancient wisdom even, I suppose.

Under a tree.

So, you know, and again, maybe that's not possible, but why isn't it possible? Is it just because we haven't thought about holding a conference under a tree?

So IKS and meeting under a tree for me is hugely metaphorical because teaching to me is an ecosystemic thing. It's stakeholder involvement. So when I pick up the phone and I'm like, Jude, let's talk about your daughter. It's through a telephone. It's not the richest media form of communication, but I'm connecting us. IKS is saying, where is the human being here? Where is the human being? And where can we tap into the human being? And where can you make the tree? Where can you root the tree? Not that we all have to go to the same tree. We, like I said, within our bodies, within ourselves, are a system. We are a tree and we have roots and trunks and leaves and this kind of uniqueness. And if we can change our thinking to understand that we embody so much power within ourselves and we can create in that moment a place of learning, it helps us reshape and reimagine the classroom. So if I am saying I teach history, I'm actually an English major. I had phenomenal, phenomenal English teachers. One thing that I will mention at the symposium is that none of my teachers were Black.

So from the moment I went to primary school to crèche, I went to an Afrikaans crèche in Pretoria, all the way to when I matriculated, every single person who taught me was of some kind of Caucasian descent, whether South African or foreign. And I make it very clear to people that I believe in representation and I believe in diversity. I don't necessarily believe in transformation. So what I'm saying is, while I had 12 phenomenal teachers, I mean, sorry, I had only white teachers, phenomenal ones for 12 years. They came with their cultural shortcomings. Mm-hmm. So they taught me diversity of thought, but due to lack of representation, My tree is not as big as it could have been when I matriculated. I am not saying my tree wasn't strong. I am not saying my tree wasn't beautiful, but I wasn't the best tree I could have been at the end of matric. And this is the hard conversation we need to be having with our white teachers to say, you are an institution. You've carried education in a very difficult time, transitioning children through into democracy. No one is rejecting that. And yes, um, it's a feminist phrase from second wave feminism, but the political is personal.

So yes, when legislation and laws gets brought into this conversation, it makes it harder. And that's what I think happened in 2019 and 2020. Legislation and constitution and interpretations thereof got involved and it then cocooned white teachers. That's what happens. And that's what I think indigenous knowledge is trying to work through is to say, if you are willing. To reevaluate which of your branches might not be the right branch for right now. It's not an indictment on you, but let's prune here. Maybe let's just prune a couple of things. And how you say things in class, you know, maybe that doesn't sit well anymore. It might have worked 20 years ago, but unfortunately it doesn't work anymore. It doesn't mean the whole tree is bad. It doesn't mean the whole tree can't work and regrow. And that is what I think indigenous knowledge is about. It's pruning. If we're gonna use the tree metaphor, it's the pruning, but we're still meeting and there's still beauty and there's still so much to give. And that's why I believe in this work is that if I could get through school with no one who looked like me until varsity and still have a conversation with Drew today, why?

What is instilled in me and what did I see? Indigenous knowledge for me is that humanness, is that connectedness. But to answer your question about meeting in a conference room or whatever, it actually, under an actual tree, the impact under a tree would be better, right? And it's about why, then why are we doing things? Are we doing the symposium to kind of have a conference? I think the symposium topic is fascinating. I'm really excited. As soon as I saw it, of course I wanted to speak there. But I do think that reimagining, you saying, what if we met under a tree? What would that do? And who's to say that beyond the symposia, there couldn't be something maybe.

I think we've got to step away from ticking boxes and, you know, making sure that we're doing what's good for whatever, but we're actually doing something And, and that there's something, I, I just think if there's one practical thing that comes out of a time of learning rather than 36 hours of theory, that I think that is where we're at now. Like we, we are all, we are all, there's an overload of content. Listen, sorry, I'm not knocking this conference that's coming up at all. I think it's critical that we are having these conversations, and I think it's amazing that it's happening, but I also wanna go, we've gotta be living what we are teaching. And yeah, so, but baby steps, right? We just need to, we just, we are getting this right. We've gotta, we've gotta eat this elephant one bite at a time, but That was just something that came to my mind. And then just to go back to those teachers who guided your journey through school, but who, who weren't representative. I think, you know, I think also change is so often dominated by fear regardless of who we are. And I think for white teachers, it's often kind of, are we being replaced?

Are we not needed? Are we not relevant? No, of course not. Oh my goodness. Every single teacher who wants to be teaching is, you know, so important. But it's, it's what can we add to the conversation and to the teaching? And we're kind of stronger. Stronger together. Sorry, that's, I know, but we're stronger together, right? And so, I mean, just personally, and maybe this, I've worked with Tomorrow Today for over 15 years now, and the leaders and co-founders have been, uh, are white men. And they, I mean, Keith Coates and Graeme Codrington, they talk about leadership and transformation and diversity. This is what we do at Tomorrow Today. We talk about about the need for diversity and the need for belonging. And, and, and, and, you know, if we look at our— we can't help it that our two founders are white men. That is who founded the business. And we are inclusive, you know, we try and do all the right things. But last year I got to work with a lady who was brought on as acting CEO as one of our, of one of our sort of legs. And for the first time I was like, okay, that is what represent— representation does.

Because all of a sudden I was like, look at the, look at how she's pushing back at the guys, right? Or look at what's happening. And no matter what, no matter how well-educated our whole team is, no matter how, how much, how passionate we all are about this, at the end of the day, until, until I saw a woman in the leadership position, I was not going to see it or feel it any other way. No one else's fault. And, you know, I'm the first one to say, goodness, we don't have enough diversity in, in teachers, in, in schools. We're 30 years on, like, it's ridiculous. And we, I've been saying that for years and years and years, but last year was the first time I could feel why. So yeah, I don't know. It's, there's, there's lots of unlearning and learning and relearning to do.

That's a stunning example though. I quite enjoyed that. And I think, I know the podcast is about me, but I think it's like sitting in that moment, right?

So.

The conference topic is about IKS and about healing.

It's a path.

Through experiencing her as a system, using her indigenous knowledge, you were changed and you were healed in a way that maybe you might not have been healed before. You didn't even know you were wounded before, right? Yeah. Because we don't know what we do not know. And this is where I think even what you mentioned about teachers feeling like, are we being replaced? And we need to be having tough conversations to say, for teachers, why is a change in demographic a replacement? Why is a change of demographic a replacement? The reason why I don't call myself a transformation practitioner is because as a linguist, I understand connotation and I understand Words carry meaning. So because of what transformation has done over the past couple of years, important work.

Mm-hmm.

It was the storming phase. It was the uncomfortable phase. So when we hear transformation, trauma kicks in for certain people and they shut down. I'm doing the literal work of a transformation practitioner. But I understand the power of language. I understand the power that it holds and that it does for moving forward. And when we also recognise that as South Africans, that we are so diverse, I think almost to a point of weakness, if we do not get the language right, Jude, we're going to struggle to meet. And connect and heal. And why I say that IKS, for me academically, is a way to do this, is that it honours the human being in front of me. You honoured that acting CEO by seeing that, wait a minute, we're all intelligent in this room. No one is doubting the intelligence in the room.

Mm-hmm.

But what's the heart posture? Am I so used to how things run that I've never challenged anything? And maybe challenging just one thing isn't a bad thing if it's gonna make the system better.

100%. I'd say yes, but it's, it's, so if I think to my personal situation, it's not about saying to our co-founders, you've done anything wrong. It's, it's not, it's, it's, I'm not talking about you here. I'm not talking about you here. I'm talking about me. This is about me. And. What someone else brings to the table. Yeah. I, and I love, I love how you frame IKS about the connexion and the human. I, ah, go back to the connexion economy in, in the workshops that we do with schools that it's not, you know, and specifically in schools. Teachers are not deliverers of content anymore because your students can get content quicker than, than waiting for, to speak to the teacher for that content. And it, you know, Google AI content is everywhere. Um, but what is your strategic advantage now is connexion and your humanness. And so what you're saying with IKKS We are at a magical time, such a powerful time to grab ho— like literally grab hold onto that and go, here we are. Because I, look, this is probably not popular opinion, but if we dropped all curriculum that is just content being fed to the, to the students, I'm okay with that.

Learning is still going to take place. Teachers are, in my opinion, they are facilitators of learning. That's where the magic lies, right? And yes, history is obviously important, but very content heavy. Is it more important that I remember a specific date because I can access that date? Or is it more important to be asking whose perspective do you think that textbook is being written by? And how does that make you feel reading about that war or those rules as who you are, isn't that where more learning is going to come? Because AI can't tell you that, right? Maybe in an ideal world for now, how do you see a future fit African school actually looking like? You know, as you mentioned, the language, uniform, what does it look like to you?

So, um, I'll share a personal thing. I made a decision to move here. I live in a village by my standards. It's like if I want something that I'm used to having grown up in Gauteng, like I said, I have to drive 20 minutes to get a fraction of it, but it's because I have a son. I'm raising a Black young man, and while I speak English fluently, very well read, travelled, studied overseas. My son could not speak his mother tongue, and that upset me as a parent. Whilst I could say my child went to this particular school and it would come with status, which I think you and I did a bit of a LinkedIn chat Parents play a role in what's happening here. You know, I had to make a deliberate decision to say, what kind of world do I want my child to grow up in? And that informs the kind of teacher that I am. So the kind of school that he's in right now has this kind of marriage of language. So when you drive in, the pillars and the value systems are in the native— not native tongue, the indigenous language, which is Setswana.

In 4 months, my son is more fluent in his mother tongue than I am because of immersion and because of exposure and because of a deliberate decision that I made as a parent in this ecosystem to partner with the school. A South African school is not even about the uniform. I think uniform is important because of socioeconomic differences. So we have to have uniforms so that all children can come to school looking the same due to socioeconomic differences. What it— what, what has evolved from there, and this uniform is better than that uniform, I think is a podcast all on its own, right? But I always tell people, point blank period, uniform is a socioeconomic decision. It doesn't matter if it's a government school, if it's a private school, uniformity, homogeneity, for me is a non-negotiable as a transformation practitioner. Because you even know, let's be honest, that some kids look different in the very same uniform because their parents can afford to give them Monday to Friday clothes versus 3 that you need to wash. Mm-hmm. So there is nuance, there's non-verbal nuance. So a uniform in a school, very important to me. I do think that we don't even have to force African-ness in everything.

I had the privilege of taking my kids on a tour to a school that has history of 146 years. Sure. Whether we like it or not, that is a colonial history. So the design of the uniform and all of those things has a colonial journey and a mandate, but openness, and not just in that school, in all colonial schools, openness to saying, what could we do to include where we are? Not change what we are, include what we are. Hmm. Uniform-wise, what did they do, right? Because if we want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, that is why transformation work doesn't work. Um, so when every— yeah, yeah, it's when people ask for my bio, like my full bio, when I do anything, I say I honour Eurocentric principles and I also want a transformation with an African-centeredness. I will talk about the Swans of Coal the same way I'll talk about Caged Bird, the same way I'll talk about Things fall apart because I don't want to forget the past to represent myself. It's, as a historian, I can't do that. And that's why content is important for me because in that content lives information that we need to connect those dots.

Okay.

So this is a beautiful segue, I think. So Africa, as we know, is sitting on the world's youngest, fastest growing population. You know, the rest of the world is battling, is going to battle with the talent and the youth, and it's, you know, all upside down. But Africa, in a few decades, Africa's young people could be among the most significant contributors to global culture, global economy, innovation. So I completely get and love to hear what you're saying about it's not turning everything African, right? It's about finding the balance of taking the best from both perhaps, or even just acknowledging because yes, we can send our youth. In, in a other podcast we were saying, you know, maybe our people will be our greatest exports and the, you know, the repercussions of that, hoping that they'll all, that our people will come back. And we all know it's hard not to come back to Africa for a lot of us. But that I think is also so critical as to why this IKS work is so important, right? We need, we need the African people to know who they are and be who they are. My colleague Buchle Shamini, he always, he's got the most beautiful laugh and he, he's in Canada.

He lives in Canada and he always just says in his deep booming voice, you gotta be who you be, dude, be who you be. And I just like, us African people have gotta be who we be. So anyway, what do you think that sort of context does for the work that, that you're doing or, or the. Importance of IKS?

Well, I wanted to maybe say that I think we are already experiencing, um, a brain drain, if I'm going to use Cold War terminology, you know. So I worked in Mauritius for a couple of years and I taught in a British international school, incredibly diverse in terms of European standards. But I mean, French was the The foundation and why I'm sharing this is because it brings nuance here that IKS for me is not an African thing. IKS is a wherever you are thing. So when I got to Mauritius, my ex-husband was able to learn French Creole within 3 months. His ability to get things out of people in that 3 months. I was like, you would think you had lived there forever. Because what IKS also understands is, and to share that one of the speakers, um, at Embrace will be focusing on multilingualism, Chris Harrison. I met Chris Harrison 10 years ago at this very school where I work now. We were both English teachers and he speaks fluent Setswana because he understood as a blue-eyed very tall, pale white man, that language gives you access. And he advocates for multilingualism. And I think this is, in the 21st century, the youth that we have, a white person who speaks an African language will be far quicker included than one who doesn't.

If I can speak fluent Afrikaans today, why can't a white person speak fluent isiZulu? We are not talking about accents. We might have the worst accent when we're doing it, but when we make effort to connect with someone with their language, there will be a real transformation. For me, like I said, I brought my child here to learn his mother tongue because I want him to be able to connect with people who look like him, because that is important. Like, be who we be, but we need to know who we are first. We must give children identity. That youth that's coming with the biggest population, if we do not teach them who they are and if they can't be who they be, then we're really just creating assimilated neocolonialists. I'm sorry to say it, that's all we're doing. Our education system is so superior in my eyes. We— I think to what you said, we're content heavy. We are super intense compared to what they're doing in Europe and in America, from what I've seen and experienced. We are really hard on our kids, and I don't think it's a content thing, Jude. I don't think it's in the classroom.

It's outside of the classroom. We have dangerous expectations of our kids. We look at sports and we look at what we expect from these children. Musicians, what we expect from these children. Cultural school plays, productions, what we expect of these children. They have full-time jobs. I knock off before some of them.

And they're still trying to navigate social media, trying to fit in there, trying to be cool enough to, you know, not be silenced or whatever it is that they call it. So I, I agree. Identity is so crucial to these, these, the youth. So, so, okay, you're a history teacher working inside a formal school system. CAPS assessments, exams, schedules, 45-minute lessons. There's already a lot in there that's not preparing them for this era, but let's move on from that because, and what you're saying is just making so much like sense. So how do you, I mean, how do you personally navigate the gap between what the curriculum currently requires and what you believe learners actually need? And again, as we've said, not saying the curriculum's gotta go and you know, the, the the new system has got to replace it. It's, it's the balance and, and getting the best from both, I suppose. So yeah, I'd be interested to hear how you navigate that personally.

I had a phenomenal 4-year degree done at Wits. I think when your methodology and all of that is done in a way that is intentional and focused on education. Teachers are equipped, right? And then you need an institution and an environment that wants you to blossom and grow. So then that speaks to school leadership. So you become qualified, but you're not competent. Once you're a teacher in a system, you grow in competence and school leaders need to promote that. That is the work that I do. I go into schools who invite me. And I talk to them about that and I say, what does it look like for you here? And we need to give school leaders grace. They are leading students who, like you said, have access to social media, access to information without full scope of understanding what is going on. Then you have diversity in an institution. My school is literally 99% Black. Or rather children of hue. I don't believe in the term people of colour, cuz Jude, you're a colour to me, so they know what that means. So people of a darker hue. And what does that mean for you?

So I, when I, when a, when a school leader who is white comes to me and says, yo, I'm struggling.

I'm like, of course you are.

You must, you must, but you don't run away. You stay in there. You have the conversations. You learn, and then you are vulnerable, and you trust that the Black body sitting in front of you will hold space for you. 'Cause again, IKS is about healing, and IKS believes in Ubuntu principles. And if we are then saying we believe in Ubuntu principles, I create a safe space for whoever's sitting across from me. And in most cases, that person's gonna be white. And I'm gonna say to you, listen. You can't keep saying things like, my daughter, you didn't get into the team because, you know, quota systems. Because I say to the same white girl, you weren't the best white person for the 7 that they chose. Those are the tough conversations we need to be having with our kids. That in the pool of whiteness and access that you have in your demographic, you were not the best. And it's not nice to hear that. But it's liberating for the kids to say quotas exist. We're not going to change that. So how do we then understand it and break it down better? So that's how I bridge the gap, by having courageous conversations that are based in fact.

Because I grew up in Waterkloof, there were two Black families on my street. Everyone was either Afrikaans or European on my street. That was just the fact. But because I come from a family of privilege as a Black person, and at the time we had socioeconomic advantage, my grandfather understood that his children needed to understand Afrikaans because the world wasn't going to change overnight. So he saw language And that's what he taught us. Language is a tool to connect. And people tend to take, in my eyes, what Desmond Tutu said about Afrikaans being the oppressor's language out of context. At that time, it was the oppressor's language because the apartheid government was using it as a tool to oppress. The language itself is not oppressive. And that's what I also talk people through, is understand the context.

That's why I teach history.

I teach history because I'm like, if I do not— that, that's my, like, Gandhi, be the change you want to see in the world. If I can convince 10 people about that, I think I'm making a change in this world, you know? And that's what I think the bridging the gap is. Bridging the gap means being brave and saying things that I just said, because some people won't agree with me because of their trauma during apartheid. And I have to honour that. I have to honour that that is how they feel. And then I have to honour the fact that the kids in front of me did not get raised in apartheid. So do you see what I'm saying? Two things can be true at the same time, and it's hard, but it's brave work. It's intentional work and it's courageous conversations. But that's why I say to you, it's about connectedness. I shouldn't be afraid to pick up the phone and call a parent. I shouldn't. Parents and teachers are partners in this thing. That is, that is my biggest message. Stakeholder involvement. Bridging the Gap has nothing to do with whether your kid got 20% or 100% in the classroom.

What difference it makes when I as a teacher type that email and I say, 'You, your kid is great today.' 'Oh, your kid is kind.' When I bring it into the classroom, I'm bridging the gap because when the child goes home and they say, 'I learnt about the Cold War today,' you as the parent can say, 'And what do you think about that? I was this old during apartheid. I was this old in the Cold War. You may not have the qualification, but you are my partner in this thing.' I can't do it all. So I'm saying, join me in this ecosystem. Join me. There's value in what you have at home. So much value.

I suppose it goes back to what you were saying about partnering school leadership and families and creating that psychological safety of being able to have these conversations. And it's hard. I know it's hard because there's sensitivities, there's emotion, there's trauma. So it's, it's hard. And my generation, we are not very good at having hard conversations, but that shouldn't stop us. And then to go back to the language, I mean, that's, again, it's, it's connexion, right? So the language, you know, giving the, the school leaders that you meet with professionally, it's giving them some language to use to, to better engage with their ecosystem. The language. I always, I always reflect on if my family were going to France for, or Spain. So here's the thing, I would love to go to Spain for 6 months with my family. So I am on Duolingo learning Spanish. I live in South Africa every day of my life. Am I learning Zulu on Duolingo? No, I'm not. And that is a problem. You know, yeah. If I was going on a 10-day holiday to France, I would probably learn more words than I know in an African language.

I do try, but not. Nearly as much as I should. Yeah. So it's, it's these things that we just need to be thinking about, right? I'm going to say us, us white people.

I am not fluent in a vernacular language either. I've made it my son's teacher's problem, right? So we need to give ourselves grace because my palate was so manipulated to speak English properly, to speak Afrikaans properly. So my palate has a prejudice. So my prejudice has almost become psychological that when I try to speak a South African language, I sound European. I am told that I sound European. And it's something that I have to work on and I work on it all the time because I feel safe in the environment where I am in. I speak vernacular, but I know I don't sound correct, and they know that I know that. So it's about feeling safe, right? But the ecosystem loves effort. The ecosystem loves intention. So when I talk about my white teachers, they made effort and intention with me. So then I could be like, that wasn't appropriate, or that was a microaggression, but I could see it wasn't the intention because of how they loved me.

So I've got a, I've got a question and then we do need to start wrapping up because I could talk to you a lot longer. I've got a question on language, right? In all schools in South Africa, you've gotta do your first language and then you've gotta do your first additional language.

Okay. Mm-hmm.

And since grade 4, my, my son is has been, wants to, so he learns Zulu on Duolingo.

Mm-hmm.

But, and that's what, that's the second language that he wanted to take. Okay. Zulu in Durban, and now we've moved to the Eastern Cape, so it's easy, closer. Mm-hmm. So it's too difficult. I know that that's wrong. I know that he could do it, but the feedback that we get from schools, most schools, this is not just a my family thing, is that to pass matric, do your, do English and Afrikaans. I'm talking now for, for the white families because A, your parents can't help you and it's a really, B, it's a really difficult language to learn. And I don't know, we've just been, we've, we've never been encouraged for our kids to take an African language in schools. And I think that that is one of our biggest tragedies in school because at the end of the day, for your second language and You being sort of linguistics, history, all of this. I'm so interested to hear what you say, because for me, a second language, like it's fundamentally, we want to communicate in it, right? So why aren't we just letting our children, students learn how to communicate, to speak? Because as you said earlier, it's about that connexion.

That the language opens up. So what are your, I guess, am I crazy to think that we should, because it's not lowering the standards. I really don't think it's lowering the standards. I think it's opening up opportunities for a different level of a language, but yeah, what do you think?

So I think it's about intentionality. It's about making sure that parents are challenging those kinds of statements because you must understand. Okay, well, I quite like this example actually. Do you understand that there's a limit, that your child is being limited because of the colour of his skin? That is what Black people go through in maths, in science, all the time. And then when a Black child becomes this math-science thing, it's like, through all the odds, they could do it. And it's like, you created the barriers yourself. You did that. You do not need to be speaking a language at home to learn it at school. I did not have anyone speaking Afrikaans at home. But by God, I was speaking Afrikaans at home. I was doing tangents in Afrikaans because that language was given status in the institution. So you must understand that this is a systemic issue. Afrikaans has been given status in schools. It's not about other languages being difficult. Let's talk hard and fast. If more African languages are taken by white students in schools, It means the Afrikaans classes become smaller. If Afrikaans classes become smaller, you don't need as many Afrikaans teachers.

If you need more African language teachers, you need to employ them. Has the schooling system done enough to train up those teachers? No. While your child is being limited due to the colour of his skin, there are sociopolitical reasons why that is happening. And that is the work that we do in DIBS. We give you the stats, we give you the logic, we give you the connexions to say there's space for everybody to do this thing. It's gonna mean change, it's gonna mean discomfort, but let's get smart about this, right? And another thing I wanna say to you, language doesn't need to be assessed. For you to learn it. Your son could learn more Xhosa from making a friend who's isitosa and saying to him, you are not allowed to speak English to me. That's how I learned French. I was not allowed to order my food in English.

Yeah.

That's how it starts. Yeah. And it builds and it builds and it builds and it builds from there. By requiring your ecosystem to make you uncomfortable, you will learn. And that's a bridge. I make my students heavily uncomfortable in the classroom, whether it's making them write 8 pages in 45 minutes. Yeah, it's uncomfortable, but I know it's going to equip you. So I think what I'm trying to say to you is, one, you can learn without being assessed formally. You must require those around you to challenge you to be better. And parents need transformation practitioners to give them the language to fight for their children. Just because your son is white, it doesn't mean it doesn't deserve to be fought for the same way. That is what the work that we do. We don't fight for Black people. We fight for everyone who wants a voice in the room. That is our job. That is our job, to include you. As best as we can based on your story.

I think that wraps it up perfectly, beautifully. I'm going to, I'm just gonna say thank you for making this conversation, um, a safe conversation for me and for the work that you're doing and for the language and skills that you are sharing and providing our country, the leaders, school leaders, and families and students. I have to know. With your son now being, having 3 months at the school and being now more fluent in, in Sotho, right? Setswana.

Okay. Setswana. So we're in a Setswana village.

What have you seen? Have you seen the impact that that has had on him? Yes.

It's funny that we started to talk about under a tree. The school is built on a mountain. It is beautiful. I wake up to this beautiful view. I call it a slice of heaven every day. My child plays outside more. He is happier because there's more of an outdoor education element to it. And while it is CAPS, you know, all of that stuff and formal education, when the school was built, it was built on African principles. It was built on— our amphitheatre's outside. It's a circle. We still have a school hall. It's about balance. So he's thriving because I think the boy child is different from the girl child. I'll always say that. And they need outside, they need play, and they needed to be away from mum. So what a gift to be at a school where my child can play outside with kids who look like him, and that is okay. But if he goes to Joburg and he's with a diverse group of kids, he feels equally comfortable and feels a sense of belonging. So that's what this has done for him. It has given him identity in who he is, but hasn't changed the fact that he still belongs in a very diverse environment.

It's been incredible for him.

Thank you, Thabocho. Thank you. So we started this conversation talking about meeting under the tree, and I hope that by now, after everything that Thabocho has shared in this episode, that that phrase means something a little different to than what it did at the start conversation. If it does, and if you're an educator or a school leader who wants to take this further, there is a space being created right now that I think you need to know about. St. Benedict's College in Johannesburg is hosting its annual Embrace Symposium on the 4th and 5th of June. The theme, as you know, is Let's Meet Under the Tree, and Thabojo, who we've just spent this time with, is one of the speakers alongside a panel that honestly, I wish I just could be there myself. It's not a sit and listen kind of event. It's practical. It's about real tools, real dialogue, and leaving with something that you can actually take back to your school community. So details are in the show notes. Go have a look. And if this conversation moved something in you today, then I think that's probably your sign.