Sujee is the Deputy Head and language teacher at Roshnee Islamic School, a secondary school in Roshnee, 50km south of Johannesburg. He strongly believes in Sally Tweedie’s (co-author of English for Tomorrow) view that language teachers’ challenge is to exploit the rapidly evolving resources of ICT. The creation and publication of information is part art and part engineering. Like Tweedie, he wants to exploit new technologies to extend learning into new areas without losing the art, but rather enhancing it.

Uppermost in Sujee’s mind is the question: “Is my classroom a springboard to the world outside the classroom?” When considering his multi-cultural teaching environment he decided to adopt the whole language approach when teaching literature. This means that he has tried to weld all aspects of language into teaching of the novel or play. Sujee explains: “Current trends in OBE and FET show that learning must phase in all learning areas and the assessment standards are all interlinked. All aspects of English such as language, poetry, writing etc. are combined in extracting the best lessons for a literature study.”

Sujee has used several classroom studies of literature to achieve this. In a study of Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country some years ago the learners went beyond the norm to produce a 5-10 minute audio production. This was to resemble a main news bulletin that included all aspects of such a bulletin. The learners became more critical of news broadcasts in the process.

As part of this exercise the learners had to design their own audio tape covers. Today his learners use digital audio and design CD-covers as if they are marketing the CD in a shop. They are therefore also developing an understanding of the marketing processes and elements of good graphic design.

As a result of this kind of teaching and learning, learners from Roshnee and Sharpeville are working together to prepare for real new broadcasts and Roshnee Islamic School now has its own radio station.

In a more recent study of Macbeth, Sujee incorporated the use of new technologies that had become more accessible, such as video. “The results were amazing,” says Sujee. “Learners acted out their plays and learnt about the cinema industry in ways that formal lessons could not teach. This showed how the world of the classroom made learners understand the world outside the classroom. The classroom is in fact the reality of the world and the learners must see it – the problem is that we keep telling them that the real world is outside!”