The Achievers School

So Rose and I have been working at a school on the outside of Ho called The Achievers School. Working there has been quite the experience from the start. The very first day Rose and I were thrown into a room by ourselves to teach seven kids something of our choosing. If I have learned anything from teaching here in Ghana it's that these kids learn through singing! They love to sing, all the time. We have made up so many songs about letter sounds and words and they'll get up and sing them all. It is so cute to see their faces when we tell them all to stand up because they all know what is coming next, a song and dance. Our biggest ordeal in the class is finding them all pencils and paper to work with everyday. Also, their pencils seem to break every other second so they will have to go sharpen them with those plastic little sharpeners. Despite the interruptions our classes do seem to be effective. What makes it all worth it is seeing the little improvements that are made day by day. Like Nice learning to write her "Ts" correctly, or Forgive paying attention and doing her work, or Anita finally making her "a's" look like "a's" instead of 9's.
The first couple days, what was really fun was teaching the kids songs from our childhood. On the first day we taught them so many games from our pre-school days. A crowd favorite was definitely ring-around-the-rosie. The next day I even saw three little four year olds trying to play it by themselves. They didn't really know the song yet so they would just walk in a circle holding hands and every once in a while fall down. They also love head shoulders knees and toes. They start to sing it almost every break time. It has also been fun learning the songs that they sing. One of my favorite's is one where the teach will yell something out and then they'll yell something back at her enthusiastically, then they'll all jump around and bump butts together. They go crazy for that song.
I am really excited to continue working at The Achievers School. I am also excited to continue to help them when I get back home. Even on the first day I began thinking about how I really want to look into getting them some good books that help with learning penmanship. These kids inspire me in how they come to this little two room school everyday to learn with the biggest smiles on their faces.