Juggling January

On the last day of 2018, one of the things Joanna did was to clean and re-ink our small collection of fountain pens. It is a slow, reflective process; well suited to the closing hours of what was a remarkable year. But it is also a forward-looking task: after all, why refill all those pens with such beautiful colours unless you plan to use them for a variety of interesting projects?

Fountain pens, incidentally, have been a wonderfully waste-reducing swap (they aren't as hard to use as they look!)

And, indeed, 2019 is full of an odd assortment of roles, responsibilities and changes: all exciting, but certainly not less varied than our ink colours!

Joanna is moving more and more into the teacher development space in her work at Axium. Her schedule now revolves primarily around coaching and teacher development sessions with Axium's teachers and volunteers, though with several staff members out of action in January and February, she hasn't had a shortage of actual teaching either! An interesting sprinkle of Maths and English across grades 6 - 12 has definitely kept her on her toes. Especially since those toes are currently bearing a lot more weight than usual, as her pregnancy has now reached its third trimester! Balancing the needs of the teams she supports with personal health and energy needs is, as always, tricky.

A new challenge is that she is getting more involved with staff development for Axium's team of Community Readers. This is a group of about 20 local staff members who visit schools daily to run isiXhosa literacy sessions with the Foundation Phase (grade R - 3) classes. Although this age group is way out of Joanna's comfort zone, the "Nobalisa"(storytelling) team has requested her input in sessions about classroom management, routines and other more general teaching skills. Adapting content for an English second language audience has proved to be difficult at times - many existing resources require an almost complete overhaul to be usable. However, so far these sessions have been very rewarding as emerging professionals grapple with how best to help our smallest children engage with the education they so desperately need. Contributing to this crucial programme in a small way has been tremendously exciting as she finds out more about what the Nobalisa team does, and how she can support this critical work.

Juggling several teams and priorities at work means that if it isn't written down, it isn't going to happen. The decorations may or may not be optional. No-one is quite sure.

Adam continues to juggle his content creation and data analysis with Siyavula, while spending most of the day on Saturday teaching Physical Sciences at the Axium Ekukhuleni programme for grades 10 - 12. Since Axium has been struggling to find a suitable Physical Sciences intern, he has had to shoulder a bigger load during his volunteering hours - not easy since he also works full time Monday - Friday! He's also been working hard to prepare our house for a new (very small) housemate - lots of new shelves have gone up in record breaking time.

Most of these books are picture books... or work books. Sadly the majority of our personal books are in Cape Town still, but obviously the books for the baby had to be prioritised!

However, in amongst all of these significant work challenges, Team Reynolds itself has been focusing on getting our personal rhythms and routines in order, and this has been a very healthy process. Keeping up good morning and evening habits means that we are protecting our personal time reasonably successfully, and maintaining good boundaries between family and work time. With less than three months before our baby girl arrives, this remains a priority for us as we look forward to a new season of working out how our family interacts with the world.

On an evening stroll (Jo's only movement speed now) to the cliffs, captured by our lovely friend Mieke who spent a beautiful weekend with us in January.