Well, it has been crazy busy here in Osiem, Ghana... until
this morning, that is. Starting yesterday, a nation-wide strike of 12+ workers
unions has ensued. The two national teachers unions are included in this, thus,
teachers are not coming to school. With no teachers in school, there is no
point to bringing students, so school was closed this morning with no certain
re-start date. I honestly have no idea when the strike will end – it seems the
unions are looking for pension benefits, so let’s see how long the government
will hold out on the majority of its workforce.
In the meantime, a lack of classes gives me a brief chance
to blog! Mind you, I am not sitting idle – especially since, as an AgriCorps
volunteer and unpaid teacher, my job is still intact. But we’ll come back to
that.
So it’s been about 3 weeks since I’ve last updated you – I thought
I would have much more time to blog in Africa, but it seems this is not the
case. Since classes started 3 weeks ago, I’ve been moving from sunrise to
sunset. Between planning and teaching five 35-minute classes a day, two 4-H
meetings a week, a district 4-H advisor training, test taking (for the
students), a weekend AgriCorps training, day-long power outages, and visits to
my fellow Corps members, I haven’t had much down time. But I suppose this is
better than being super bored and feeling deficient – something that may creep up
on us if this strike lasts long.
Amidst all the activity, I am continually being affirmed as
to why I am truly here – I’m here for the students. How is this different than
being an ag teacher/FFA advisor in the states? Well, it really isn’t that
different – young people are hungry to be seen, heard, and invested in. It
doesn’t matter if they are poor Ghanaian middle schoolers or middle class Pennsylvanian
high schoolers. They simply desire to be valued. Teachers all around the world have
the extremely significant task of loving on youth. Here in Ghana, I’ve found
that this does not look the same as in the U.S. The hierarchal structure here
has children as inferior to adults and therefore completely submissive to the
teacher’s authoritative role in the classroom – this can be visualized by the “cane.”
Teachers in Africa (similar to teachers in the U.S. about 50 years ago) are the
center of the classroom, thus instruction is centered around them. If there is
a learning disruption or lack of submission to the system, students are “caned”
(whipped in the backside with a long, flexible wooden rod). Teaching usually involves
lecture and copying of notes, with question asking as the most common method of
checking for understanding. However, in classes of 40-60 students, not everyone
gets the chance to answer questions – so the stars shine and the slower
students sit quietly.
Mind you, teachers are not heartless beings – they generally
care about their students. But caring about youth here means that you teach
them to be disciplined and respectful to their elders – something that we often
neglect in the U.S. I’ve come to respect the way that children are always
willing to serve their elders (even if it is another youth just a few years
their senior). I feel as if I don’t deserve the service from these children
since I didn’t really have to serve my elders in the same way when I was a
youth...
Regardless, student-centered instruction is scarcely seen
here. Thus, the student learning “activities” I have utilized so far have been
widely accepted by the youth and even misunderstood at times (i.e. these
students have never been asked to “teach” their peers, so a small group
teaching activity wasn’t quite grasped at first). One of the most rewarding
results of my desire to use experiential, student-centered learning has been a
comment by one of the 9th grade students. He came up to me about 2
weeks ago and said, “Madam, the way you teach agriculture in class – it makes
me want to study agriculture at university. I want to learn more and become a
successful agriculture scientist and you have made me believe I can do that.”
I wasn’t expecting to see many fruits of my service here,
but that one was pretty huge – powerful enough to motivate me for another 8
months!
Another exciting event has been the success of the 9th
grade class on their animal digestion exam. They took the test this past Friday
and, as opposed to the normal test average of 50-60%, the class average is 79%!
I was so proud to give so many stickers to those who scored an A (80%) or
higher and especially proud that some of the top scorers were the executive
officers of the Saviour 4-H club!!
Okay, I’m done bragging about the 9th grade
class. But I really am proud of them – I have a lot of fun teaching them, even
if it is a class of 64 students. Let’s hope this strike ends soon so we can get
back to the unit on soil and water conservation (one of my favorite topics)!
What else is happening? Well, 4-H Saviour is receiving
funding from the head church pastor (who is also a nationally renowned cocoa
farmer and member of the Ghana presidential council) to build their pig rearing
structure! We hope to break ground next week so that the piggies can arrive in
early November! Hopefully we can be productive with the free time during the
strike to really get moving on this project, along with several others. However,
I do realize this isn’t a sustainable model (wait for school to be canceled to
do all the work...). Oh well, we’ll be opportunistic! More updates/photos to
come on the pig project!
As I observe other teachers and get frustrated with them
beating children, I realize that I cannot make them change their ways. I am
attempting to demonstrate student-centered, youth empowering strategies that
will hopefully be picked up and adopted here. Thankfully, I have a very
understanding and adaptive counterpart who I hope will continue to use
innovative teaching methods. I’ve been telling him, any time he complains about
Ghana or poverty, that change starts with him changing his actions. This is how
I am trying to live... You all know the famous Ghandi quote, and its ironically
painted on the wall of our school library (by a previous U.S. educational volunteer
group):
“Be the change you want to see in the world.”
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