Personal Blogs

In all of my adventures to Ghana over the years, I have always dreaded one thing: going home. I must admit that this time, I am looking forward to returning home. Hot water, working electricity, a home cooked meal in my own kitchen, my dog…Anyway, this is the first time I have actually looked forward to returning home, but for very sad reasons.

This is the fourth time that Robert and I have volunteered in a Ghanaian school. In 2017, we installed a computer lab in the school, something we were incredibly proud of since the pupils desperately need to learn on real computers and not by drawings on the board. However, dodgy electricity (and I mean really dodgy) along with sea air have taken their toll on the computers. Further, Robert was here this week to repair them, but has not had electricity to work with meaning that this week has pretty much been a waste. He has managed a bit of relaxation, but we were actually here to get some things done. At this point, the computer lab still has 2 working computers, and we also added five working laptops to the collection. Hopefully, these might be a bit more robust, but with fifty pupils per class, it’s difficult to teach with only seven machines.

I can’t help but be disappointed overall in Ghana’s government and education service for how the children in this school are treated. There isn’t equality. If a minister has his child in a school, that school will get preferential treatment. Being a deprived school in an urban slum, this school does not receive much needed basic resources. Where my E209 (Subject Knowledge for Primary Teachers) students might complain that British schools don’t have adequate resources for things like science, I would argue that teachers actually rely too heavily on them. I’ve been teaching in substandard buildings with holes in the concrete floors and tin roofs. Many of the benches on desks are broken, so children need to sit very carefully so they don’t fall off. There are no toilets for the pupils and what’s available for the teachers has me crossing my legs and waiting until I get home (not something you wanted to envision??? Me neither!). The children lack basic tools such as pens or pencils. Science is a subject taught in a book and not using more constructivist methods and creativity.

Another issue is teacher availability. The teachers had training this week and they were divided into two groups for this. Pupils were left unattended for this all-day training for two days and I managed to get into some classes for extra lessons, including an introduction to the violin. Why does the school remain open instead of providing the training in one day and closing the school? There is plenty for the children to do at home and most have to do work and chores. They were left at school without tasks to complete, without supervision, and let me say, it was a bit noisy. I’m not sure what the thinking was, but the result was certainly not good.

In my own teaching, I have relied much more heavily on creativity and much less on resources that tell me how to teach material as we have in the US and the UK. My resource was my brain. With a whiteboard, a marker, and a book, two of which I provided from the UK, I have been able to teach complete lessons which were effective for the children’s learning. I have convinced at least one English teacher of two about the methods by which I draw on the book to create learning opportunities. I have also allowed the children to have more freedom in their work, telling them less, and asking them to do more.

In an English lesson on Tuesday, with the school out of control, I asked what the children wanted to do. They begged me to read. They used that imploring look that children get when they desperately want something. We read four chapters of Journey to Jo’burg, and we were able to cover reading comprehension verbally (though they have notebooks as well) and also discuss some bigger issues including equality, the police, and helping others. This is all working up to the end assignment which will be an essay on the theme of helping people which is a throughline in the book.

In spite of the above, I can’t help but be disappointed by the lack of progress in the school. I would think that children going to school in the 21^st century, regardless of location, should be entitled to certain things such as a restroom. Boys use the bush and girls frequently have to go home which means an end to their school day. The World Bank has provided two bathrooms to the school, but has not yet hooked up a water supply to them so that there is running water. Teachers have to pump water into buckets and take it to their loo for use. There is absolutely no privacy as a result.

Children have a set ‘library’ period each week, but have no library. There are school textbooks which are duller than any of those we came across when I was in school. However, this really seems to be a period of the day set aside so that a teacher doesn’t have to be present. The children are left to manage themselves and for any of you who have junior-high-school-aged children, you know that no matter how great your kids are, things go into very different directions when they become unmonitored gangs of 50. They are basically up to no good.

Today I am working toward wrapping up my month at the school. I’ve been presenting my violin to pupils in the school and even letting them try it. Yes, I let pupils in Ghana touch my violin. There is some talent here and I really wish I could start a programme. Unlike many adolescents in the UK and the US, these pupils are very curious rather than jaded (or pretending to be bored in order to appear ‘cool’) by the idea of such an instrument and were really excited to try it. I’m glad I made the choice to bring it and wish these pupils had more opportunities for formal music lessons. Many play drums, but they don’t have musicianship and theory training. They aren’t reading music, and they aren’t able to write own what they want to compose. Wouldn’t it be great if this was something that could be nurtured here, especially given the amount of talent I’ve seen?

Anyone reading this is likely to see me rambling today, but this isn’t an essay or a paper for publication. It’s just my thoughts to now and I hope that my readers have enjoyed reading them and maybe even learned something. I don’t know if I will have the chance to enter another post before I leave Ghana, but watch this space. You never know!

Anyone who knows me well also knows that I am a very heavy drinker. I can never get enough water. Over the past two mornings, I have stopped myself from drinking my water first thing upon finding piles of ants attempting to stay alive in it by climbing on top of other ants, a bit reminiscent of scenes from Titanic, but in my water glass and definitely not kosher. Until now, and on any of my previous trips to Ghana, this had never been an issue. I will do a lot to avoid using bottles of water which are actually quite difficult to recycle as compared to the sachets produced, so I use water filtration to get some chemicals out of the water from bags and then drink it from a glass. The ants, however, are hampering my efforts. This, in a way, is not unlike what I’ve been learning about how students are surviving in the school I’m working in. It’s definitely not identical, but it does represent the hardships they encounter, the drive to do what they must.

First, I try not to pity the students, but it can be hard. On the way to school on Monday, my friend and ride to campus stopped to talk to a boy who was clearly not headed to school and who should have been. He was asked directly by my friend if he would eat that day. This isn’t a cultural question, as you might find in places like China, but a very real question with an equally real response. The student indicated that he might eat at home, but it didn’t sound positive to me. I came across this issue in my work in Title I schools in California, turning a cheek when some pupils would finish their free school lunch and then pilfer a bit of food to take home. I wasn’t about to stop them, especially when nobody else seemed to want the fruit they were taking. In this case, though, there is no school meal from which the pupils might gather a few extra bits for their family or themselves. There is also no outside support system to assist.

I further encountered a situation in which a young person (age 16) was ready to quit school having been late again and told that they would be held back again. The teacher doing the telling has a lot to answer for in this situation, but I took the young person aside for about twenty minutes of pastoral care. It revealed so much to me and I saw the situation as simply desperate. This person lives in this area so that she can go to a better school than that in the rural area from which she comes. Exploited by an auntie to do numerous chores before school, making said pupil late for classes regularly, the pupil earns a beating from the teacher for being both late and for not paying different fees (noting this is a ‘free’ public school). The pupil can’t please the auntie or the teacher, so the next thing to do is quit, but quitting will just make the rest of life worse. We talked at length about what could happen if the young person stayed in school, but it really isn’t as simple a decision as we would like to think in the western nations. The forces in this child’s life will not change their ways, so the child is faced with how to make changes (perhaps some kids in western education could learn from this?), but the only means at present involve giving up school. I sincerely hope the pupil doesn’t, but I recognise that I am not going to be here for long to make sure the pupil stays in school. One friend back in Cambridge suggested sponsorship, but this doesn’t actually remove the opposing forces striking regularly at the child. If it were that easy, I’d pay up right away. The pupil still has an auntie using her as a domestic and still has beatings from the teacher for doing the auntie’s bidding instead of being on time to school. The young person can’t please anybody, so will give up instead.

The school is labelled ‘deprived’, but this doesn’t begin to describe the lack of adequate bathroom facilities, the shoddy workmanship of a building built 8 years ago which looks considerably older than the 40-year-old building next to it due to holes in the concrete, leaky roofing which tears apart in storms, and much more. The children are incredibly deprived and, from what I can see, this isn’t going to change.

In my time here, I am hoping that the children can see that there are other ways to do things, learn to think more critically about their lives, and that they can learn to pay forward a simple kindness. I hope they will see that I do not beat them, but that I treat them with respect, even if it isn’t wholly returned (it is junior high after all!). Maybe they will learn from that and move forward in their lives, not beating children, but developing meaningful relationships with them instead. If it happens with even one or two, I will have succeeded a little bit.

As for the ants, I’m afraid that if they invade my water, I will be ruthless. They’re going down!

I got my first mosquito bites Tuesday. Few worries about malaria since I’m taking a prophylaxis, but just thought I’d say that one hasn’t really ‘arrived’ until one begins to be eaten alive. I’m pretty sure the first was in class that day, while starting my teaching of Journey to Jo’burg.

After putting the fear of G-d into my pupils (classroom management makes everything go more smoothly), we were able to commence our studies of the book using more active, student-centred approaches than the pupils or teachers are accustomed to. With brand new paperbacks, beautiful colours illustrating the cover, I asked the children to look at the books and identify at least five items that they noticed about the books. One class, considered slightly more advanced than another at the same year level, identified obvious items from the cover, including the animals, people, clotheslines, and the title. The class identified as not as strong was surprising in their approach, giving much more substantive detail about items in the book as well as on the book such as chapters, illustrations, and pages. Working as groups, they had to explore the books and by the way that each class had done it, they had never experienced this before, an assumption confirmed by teachers who stated the pupils would rarely see a ‘new’ book, much less one meant to entertain as well as educate. While some children had difficulties understanding, they did manage the task well.

One thing I did ask them to do, and I’m sure I’ve made the top crazy teachers list in Ghana for this one, is to smell the books. Brand new, never been used, and they had ‘new book smell’, that glorious scent that makes many of us high upon walking into a book store. While they did smell the books as instructed, moving from senses of sight and touch to smell, they were definitely confused about why a teacher would ask them to smell a book. I know this may be one of the few times that they experience new book smell, but given a general lack of book stores here, as well as limited literacy skills and textbooks that don’t quite inspire avid reading, I can see why they haven’t gained the passion for reading I would love for them to have, but at least they have smelled a new book, even if they don’t understand why I deemed it important to the learning experience. I warned the pupils that the smell would go away soon, especially since two hundred of them are sharing one class set over the coming month. Given my warning, I am going to keep an eye out for the pupils who have taken up book sniffing as we proceed. It could happen.

In other news, I read some not terribly well-written, but loaded with meaning, short paragraphs today while marking students’ exercise booklets. In preparation for the content to come in Journey to Jo’burg, I asked students to answer one of two questions posed: a) What do you think it might be like if you lived apart from your parents? OR b) What is it like to live apart from your parents? Leaving aside grammar, spelling, syntax, and more, once one reads into what the pupils are writing, there is some serious meat in the work. One child said it would be terrible to live apart from her mother because she couldn’t wish her a ‘Happy mother’s day’, thanking her for giving birth to the child. Other children pointed to the love of their parents and how they try to make sure they go to school everyday so they can have better lives and become good people. For the second question, I read about how children missed their parents desperately because the people they live with, though relatives, are strangers to them in many ways and that they must do too much work for them. Essentially, they are saying, not in so any words, that they are exploited for a place to stay so they may go to school in the city instead of in rural areas of Ghana. The children living with parents showed fear of abuse, most likely due to the fact that they see this all the time. I was warned of such conditions by teachers on my previous visit, so the assumption isn’t entirely guesswork. Children identified, in general, issues of joining street gangs and the potential for criminal activity including robbery and prostitution. This is junior high school, folks.

The children did not know that this was an assessment to see where they are with a variety of skills, but they showed me that there is a lot to be taught in the coming weeks, and much more for the teachers to continue with once I’m gone. The teachers did not know that children could accomplish so much in one lesson. Hopefully, they will gain almost as much from this experience as I.

I’m now on my journey, and it promises to get better and better as the weeks progress. I can’t wait! (By the way, I’ve got yet another mosquito bite this evening to accompany the earlier nibbles.)

I've decided to resume my blogging, mainly because I will have students in my E309 group (International and Comparative Studies in Education) who may find it of interest. I have had a long relationship with my Ghanaian family which has led to my love for the country and its people. To that end, my husband and I travel regularly to volunteer in a deprived school, working with Nathan, a truly dedicated teacher.

When I received an Air Mail letter in the mail, in Modesto, California back in 1992, I never knew the impact it, or the person who penned it, would have on my life. I met Joyland while sitting on the curb in front of my house, wondering where this letter had come from. Some of you might be thinking that this was the historical version of the Nigerian prince scam, but it was anything but. In reality, I had signed up two years earlier for a pen pal in Russia, but nothing came of that. However, my name was given to a young man names Joyland in Ghana, a country I had never before heard of. After reading his letter, I went into my house to check the encyclopedia (where's the internet when you need it!?!) and there was Ghana, a five-year-old nation. Okay, not really. The encyclopedia was published in 1972, so still had the Soviet Union in it. Joyland and I maintained our correspondence which grew into a strong friendship over the years, regardless of where we were located.

Jump to 2008, and my husband and I were planning our first visit to Ghana, to meet a family which was ours by this point, but not knowing what to expect. We were welcomed with open arms by Joyland and his wife Emma, two of our dearest friends in the world, people we will call brother and sister until the end of our lives. Their family was welcoming and we had the grand tour of Ghana from Ghanaians. We saw all the best Ghana had to offer on that trip, but my brain was seeing a lot of other things as well. When Robert and I decided we would return in 2010, we thought we should be doing something while there, so we dipped our toes into volunteering in a school where Robert worked with Nathan on building up the computer lab with donated computers that he taught the teachers to rebuild so they would work. I took on Writer's Workshop activities as well as introducing my violin to the pupils of the school. In just a few days, we realised there was so much we could contribute that we decided to take this on longer term.

We returned to Ghana in 2014, and we were well steeped in the school again. This time, it was in science teaching and Robert went back to work on the computers.

In 2017, I volunteered for a month in a deprived urban slum school where we donated a computer lab and where I taught various subjects, but I'm returning again in January to take on English language and writing. Robert will join me for the last week of the trip in February to, you guessed it, work on those computers.

We are anxious to return soon and I am hoping to keep up this blog, especially during the visit, to keep people, especially my students, apprised of a variety of issues including pedagogical practices, working conditions, learning environments, how my teaching is going, and much more. I thoroughly enjoy the transformational process the classrooms undergo when I visit the school and I hope the pupils enjoy it as well. Introducing a hybrid curriculum, getting away from the old colonial methods, always seems to energise the pupils, though it appears to terrify some of the teachers a bit.

I am looking forward to having lots of news to share as the journey progresses.