Teaching at the Achiever's School

My name is Rosie Hale. I came to Ghana about two weeks ago and this is my first blog. So far my experiences in Ghana have been absolutely incredible. I have been here for two of the weekend excursions which allowed me to see both the north and south parts of Ghana. I am involved in the education part of the program.

During the week I work at the Achiever's School located in Ho with Julie Favorito (another volunteer). The first day I went to the school it was a bit shocking. I had seen two other schools in Ghana before coming to to the Achiever's school and this school was far different from any school I had ever seen before. It is located in the front yard of someone's house. It is two tiny little rooms with a white board in each room, about 6 tables, some chairs, and a few books on one of the tables. There are holes in the walls that chickens come in through during class and when the kids want to go to the bathroom they walk right out the door and go. The schools has about 20 students.

On our first day the head teacher, Gloria, put us right to work. The first classroom has children ages 2-4 in it. The second classroom has children ranging from 4-7 years old. The second teacher, Precious, comes in late so Gloria left us with the older kids for the first 1.5 hours and told us to teach whatever we wanted. At the time we had no idea of their capabilities or how the classroom was run but we did our best. There were a bunch of words written on the white board so we went through the words and practiced pronunciation and spelling. The kids were very timid on the first day and barely spoke in class. However, once it got to break time they would not stop touching us. We went outside to play with them but we found that they did not even really want to play with us all they wanted to do was touch us. About ten children circled around both Julie and I fighting over who got to old our hands. The ones that weren't able to hold our hands held onto our legs or arms. In order to get some air and avoid any injuries Julie and I sang every song we could think of for them. We did dances for them and found that they really enjoyed sitting in a circle and practicing making different animal noises. Because of our skin color, we were so new to them. They were so intrigued by us that at any moment I could catch three students just staring at me.

Today was the fourth time at the school for me. Things have definitely changed as they have gotten to know me and Julie. They are no longer shy and quiet in the classroom. Their regular teachers hit them or at least threaten to hurt them if they act out of line. They have quickly learned that we will not lay a hand on them no matter how much they act up. Because of this they have become a lot harder to control in the classroom when one of the teachers is not around. We have come up with some useful tactics but it is still one of the most difficult parts of teaching them. On a positive note, we have definitely began to understand each of the students capabilities and we are able to create lessons that will be helpful to both the four year old in the classroom as well as the 7 year old. We have been focusing a lot on the sounds of the letters in the alphabet. They can recite the alphabet perfectly, however, we have found that they do not understand what the letters mean and the sounds that they make. We are trying to teach them the sounds of the letters and build up to reading simple words once they understand the sounds. It feels good because I think they are all starting to understand it!