Monday, 13 June 2011—Accra

Monday, 13 June 2011—Accra

Classes went very well again today.  With the third form, we finished the lesson on the spread of Islam, then moved into a condensed version of the Slave Trade introductory activity asking them to think about how their society would be different if it were to lose about 30% of its population.  The students put great effort into everything that I ask them to do, which allowed the activity to move very quickly with this older group.  Their age, their past educational experience in Ghana as a developing nation, and their high levels of ability together allowed them to engage very actively in considering this question.  They have great stores of prior factual knowledge that bears directly on this question, and so the results of their thinking and discussions are quite sophisticated.  This has truly been a case where the inquiry-based exercise has lead students to conclusions that I, as the teacher, had not thought of.  I understand based both on the fact that they are here at AGISS and on my own personal experiences with them in the classroom that my students are quite literally some of the best students in the entire country of Ghana.  It is a privilege to teach such a group, yet I am still not sure, given my relative newness to Ghanaian culture in general and the Ghanaian educational system in particular, that I can fully appreciate their academic abilities. 

With my perspective on WASSCE and BECE (school certificate exams at the end of senior high and junior high respectively) from yesterday, I could speak with the students some today as I taught about how my teaching style, focused as it is on big picture items and connections, might help them a little on the WASSCE exam.  Osman will help them to have all the facts that they need at their disposal, as well as introduce them to the kinds of essay questions that they will face.  All I can hope to do in my short time here (and remember that the WASSCE exams at the end of fourth form cover everything that is learned in a subject during the entire four years of senior high school) is to perhaps give them one or two ideas that may help them in structuring their responses to any essay questions on the questions that we have covered in our lessons.

The first form students continued the Writing African History lesson as we continued to work our way through the various sources available for this purpose, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of each.  For each possible source, the initial responses from students were almost uniformly taken word for word from the text, and so I had to take some time during the middle of the lesson to discuss what I mean by thinking about a question such as this.  By saying that their answers came word for word from the text, I do not mean that they were looking in the text, though some were and I encouraged them to do so as a way of learning the material they did not already know, but rather that they have memorized and know many of these responses by heart.  This kind of factual recall is part of the nature of learning in the schools in Ghana, and it is well-suited to success on the WASSCE exams.  Some of the students are clearly very good at this, and that no doubt gives them the confidence to consistently raise their hands and offer correct answers even in the context of a lesson and teacher that are somewhat different from those to which they are accustomed.  I think several of the students in this form and the others have been a little surprised when, upon providing a factually accurate answer and preparing to sit back down (remember that students rise to speak), I have stopped them and followed up with another question along the lines of “Okay, but what does that mean?”  In explaining to them the kind of thinking that I was looking for, I had to give a number of examples of how I wanted them to use their extensive factual knowledge, but also to go beyond it, going beyond not just these facts, but also the somewhat formulaic manner in which they typically produce their answers.  After my explanation, I did begin to receive a number of more divergent answers from some of the students.

Again, after class I had a group who wanted to talk with me (and try to touch my pony tail).  The students’ hair is uniformly short, so mine is a big contrast.  Yesterday at assembly, I saw a couple of teachers stop two of the entering day students to speak with them about their hair, which appeared to have been treated somehow so that it was a little looser and longer looking.  I asked the teachers about this afterwards and they confirmed that the students were being told their hair looked too long—it must be kept short so that it does not look unkempt. 

Returning to my rooms for lunch, I met the school’s accountant.  I mentioned to her an article that I had read in one of the newspapers given to me by Ms. Akapame several days ago describing concerns in the National Assembly about the costs of construction for new student blocks and classroom blocks at secondary schools in the country.  Given that projects of both kinds are currently underway at AGISS, I wondered if this is one of the schools involved.  She confirmed that it is.  The costs, however, which were described in the article as being around Gh₵600,000 for the housing, and Gh₵200,000 for the classroom blocks, seem to me to be quite reasonable for the size of the buildings that are involved here.  Of course, the costs of construction, as for everything else here in Accra, are probably higher than these average figures, and I got the impression that one of the prime movers in the Assembly of this inquiry was concerned because the costs had been so much higher than the Gh₵80,000 spent recently on a similar classroom block in a smaller town or rural center.  The construction here at AGISS seems to be badly needed—the new classroom block will do much to relieve the crowding and scheduling challenges for classes, while the new student blocks will permit all students to enroll as boarders, eliminating the need for some to remain day students as is presently the case.  After lunch, a red-red mixture, but with the beans/rice mix and sauce served separately, and which was more than I could finish, I spent over three hours typing up notes from Saturday and Sunday, and am not nearly finished

Osman picked me in the evening, and we went to the bar near Paul’s house, who hosted us for dinner, buying beer there, but bringing food from his kitchen.  I met three of his sons and his daughter as they were bringing dishes back and forth.  We started with thin soup with goat meat, which actually tasted quite good in the spices from the soup.  This was a very leisurely meal.  Our second dish later was a vegetable stew with (yellow?) yams and plantains.  The yams are very white and starchy—not like sweet potato style “yams” from the United States at all.  We had a brief power outage, but Paul pulled out a mini flashlight and shined that on the table with his left hand while we all ate with our right.  One of Paul’s sons is a computer tech and we are to visit him one day next week.

Osman and I spent some time discussing some things that we still need to work out—details for the workshop, my travel arrangements for Kumasi (he is protective and a little leery of my meeting Ernest), gifts, and insuring chances to meet and take pictures with the students in each form.  I also told him that I have compiled quite a list of additional questions about Ghanaian education beyond those he has already answered for me that I want to ask him about whenever we have time.