It’s Monday and my first day with the students. I was up easily at 6:00. Dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, and with hair undone after my night’s sleep, I opened my sitting room door in order to go next door to shower and shave, only to be greeting by a waiting Ms. Akapame, the headmistress, who had been busy and unable to meet me the previous evening. I think I managed a reasonable level of composure under the circumstances and was able to return her greetings and welcome.
Osman picked me up for the start of the day, which begins at 7:00 with the students gathering for assembly in front of one of the academic buildings. A large proportion of the school’s 1200+ students are boarders, who can be seen prior to the assembly sweeping the grounds or hauling trash toward the end of the campus past my residence. For assembly, the students line up in neat and tightly packed rows by form (the equivalent of our grade level). There are currently only three forms attending classes—the fourth form students recently took their West African certificate exams, completing their schooling, and so have departed. Still, there are a lot of students in their white and green print school uniform dresses, a few with gray sweaters on top. Announcements began with the singing of several Christian hymns, lead by one of the students, but also pointing immediately to a difference with American public schools. There are some beautiful voices in the group. Singing was followed by a bible reading and brief message preached by Ms. Akopolo, whom Osman tells me is the head house mistress, in charge of the girls in their boarding rooms. Some brief daily announcements were made and Ms. Akapame also addressed the girls. There were two special announcements for the day—the first was that a student named Angela had the previous weekend won a nationally televised student academic quiz competition. That is a clear indication of the caliber of the students I’ll be teaching here. The second announcement was my introduction—I was presented with a kente (traditional Ghanaian weaving) style scarf embroidered with my name on one side and “Akwaaba,” the Twi/Akan (indigenous Ghanaian language) word for “welcome” on the other side. I was asked to say a few words of greeting, and taking a cue from Ms. Akapame, who had spoken to the girls about putting their heart into all their endeavors for Accra Girls Senior High School, I promised that over the next two weeks I will put my heart into my teaching here. Throughout these activities, day students continued to arrive, coming in through the front gates and joining their classmates on the assembly grounds.
After announcements, boarding students head off to the dining hall for breakfast while day students go to their classrooms to study or wait for classes to begin. Osman took me through the dining hall and into the kitchen to meet the staff. They have a lot of mouths to feed, and apparently do their cooking using wood from the large pile out back behind the kitchen, which like the other buildings I’ve seen, has large windows open to the outside. With some time remaining before classes began, Osman wanted to take me to meet Amina. We almost didn’t make it back in time. Just after leaving the school gates and turning right onto Achimota Road, his car died. Leaving me sitting in the car within sight of my rooms just behind the wall the surrounds the school, he took off running down the hill in his suit, tie and dress shoes, disappearing around the corner at the road that marks the far end of the campus. As it turned out, he was heading to a mechanic’s located just a hundred meters around the turn at the turn-off into his own neighborhood in Zongo. No more than ten minutes later, as I was watching the two lanes of traffic behind us funnel into one to squeeze by us on the left, Osman came running back up the hill just as quickly, trailed by three guys from the mechanic’s shop. Failing to get the car started, they gave us a push and we coasted down the hill on Achimota, around the corner, and down that street until with just enough momentum remaining, we took two sharp rights and landed in the middle of the mechanic’s shop. The “shop” was actually more of a “yard,” with all the work being done in the open air. A wooden bin under a small roofed shed, and what looked like a beat-up, wheel-less old Chevette with metal riveted over the windows are apparently used to store tools and parts at night. The chief mechanic, whom Osman referred to as “Boss,” certainly knew his stuff, checking the battery with an short piece of insulated cable by touching one end to each of the terminals to generate a spark, then reaching down behind the engine up near the passenger compartment to manipulate a part that got the engine revving. In order for the mechanic to fix the problem, he first rode with us to Osman’s, waiting with the car while I went inside with Osman to meet Amina and Shaida, his daughter, then after we continued on to AGISS, he drove the car back to his yard to do the work. Both Amina and Shaida, were thrilled with the gift of the stacking stars that I’d given Osman the night before, with Shaida clutching one tightly when we arrived. Osman’s mother has been at home both times that I have been there, but I’ve not been introduced. I’ll have to get some sense from Osman of the expectations/rules governing interactions in his community between older females like mother and unrelated males like myself.
Osman has kept telling me how excited his students are that I am here after the many months that he has been telling them about me. When we got back to AGISS, he walked me around for a while. In the process I met a number of faculty members, far too many for me to remember all their names accurately, though they were all helped to know mine by my kente scarf. As 9:00 approached, we headed to the class block for our first class, for third form students (the equivalent of our 11th graders). Each class is a double 40 minute period. Third form ran until 10:20 and then first form from 10:20-11:45 with a brief break midway through the class.
Some immediate contrasts with my Berkeley Middle School teaching environment were evident:
· First, the numbers of students are much greater—about 46 in the third form and over 80 (!) (I couldn’t get an exact count) in the first form. The first form students brought chairs in from other classes to sit in the aisles, completely filling them.
· Second, even with those large numbers, the students were very quiet and attentive, so that it was still possible to teach.
· Students stand and greet the teacher in chorus, and individual students, after raising their hands and being called upon, stand to ask or answer a question.
· In speaking to Osman or me, we were always addressed as “sir.”
· After each class, student prefects, two or three to a class, bring a notebook to the front for the teacher to sign, along with recording the subject matter for the day’s lesson. This is turned in by the prefects at the end of the day to the headmistresses office and is used as a record to insure that teachers are indeed present in their classes.
· No attendance is taken by the teachers
The classrooms are bare walled. Well, actually there are only bare walls in the front and back of each room. The side walls are entirely made up of louvered openings, some with grids over them and some with screens, so that the breeze can blow through. The front wall in each room contained a white board and the rear a largely unused bulletin board. Also contributing to the lack of wall décor may be the fact that each classroom is used by a variety of teachers/subjects throughout the day. Here teachers move from room to room instead of students, many of whom remained in their seats after each class to await their next teacher in the same room.
Osman gave me a very nice introduction in each of the classes, exhorting the students to take advantage of my presence while I am here. For the third form, he also had the officers of the Accra Girls History Students Association (AGHISA) introduce themselves. Osman took the third form students through a review of the Methods of Writing African History. After three years with him, they really know this material well. Osman and I later discussed how even the portion of this material that might have initially required students to apply various forms of critical thinking, for example to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using different kinds of historical source materials, can become over time just another type of routine factual information. While the review, then, did a good job of showing that the third form students have largely mastered the definitions and applications of the material, in itself the review probably didn’t contribute anything new to the students’ learning. I took careful notes of the questions and answers that Osman was covering, since I’m going to be responsible for teaching this material to the first form students on Friday. I added marginal notes about things I might do differently, particularly the idea of using a t-chart for the advantages and disadvantages of the different sources for writing history, and methods such as Pair-Share.
Many of the things I do in my classroom, though, will simply not work here given the number of students, the limitations on space, and the resources available. I’ve been aware of that fact all along as I tried to plan my lessons, but now I’ve had a chance to see the actual conditions under which I’ll be teaching, and so can begin to figure out precisely what I will be able to do and not do. The lessons I will be teaching include:
Form 1 —Methods of African history
--Civilization of Axum and Ethiopia
Form 2—Trans-Atlantic slave trade
--Bantu migrations
Form 3-- Trans-Atlantic slave trade
--Swahili coastal trade
--Bantu migrations
--Spread of Islam in Africa
More topics may be added depending on how many class sessions I have with each form, and how long each lessons take—that is a difficult thing for me to predict with the different teaching conditions that I will be working under here. I have to say that coming to Africa and being asked to teach the history of Africa to Africans is a little humbling.
For the first form class, Osman took it easy on me and had me do a general question and answer session with the students. The students had a variety of interesting questions about the history of the U.S., early U.S. founding fathers, the history of ancient civilizations in the U.S., the American educational system, and or different types of religion. These are very sharp and very attentive girls. After the bell, six or eight gathered around me and continued asking questions, this time about U.S. college admissions.
After class, Osman and I talked briefly about the lessons I’m to teach for each form. I’ve expressed some concern about what resources I will be able to use each time, because I want to teach the lessons in such a way that they could be taught in the same manner by Osman or other teachers in Ghana. Also, I started to think during the third form class that, based on Osman’s review, what I want to do may not help much with the West Africa exams that all students take at the end of fourth form to determine whether they can get into university programs. Osman said that I shouldn’t worry about this. He just wants his students to be exposed to new ideas and ways of thinking. Based on his comments, including his indication that the West Africa exam may be somewhat broader in its approach than I thought based on his Methods of History review lesson, I figure that if my lessons address the subject matter that we’ve agreed upon, even if they don’t hit the precise points that need to be learned for the exam, it won’t be a problem, since Osman will address the exam-related points at other times. I have to remember that I’m only here long enough to teach the different classes between three and five times each, so if I can help provide the students with a broad overview of the areas covered by my lessons, this will serve as a structure around which Osman can help them build up more specific and factual knowledge.
After classes, we met briefly with Ms. Akapame. She asked about my food preferences and whether I would want to cook, etc., out of concern for what kinds of foods I’d want to eat. I tried to emphasize that I am very flexible and would be happy to eat Ghanaian food the whole time I am here. There are a lot of people here looking out for my welfare and working to insure that my visit is as enjoyable and comfortable as possible.
Osman and I also discussed with her our plan for the radio program that we hope to be able to do on PeaceFM with Kwami Sefa Kayi, a morning talk show host on the station here in Accra whom I met in April when he was a guest at our house in St. Louis while he was in the U.S. as a participant in the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program. Kwami and I spoke about the possibility of his having me on as a U.S. teacher to speak about my observations of comparisons between the Ghanaian and American education systems. Ms. Akapame had wanted to know more details about what we would be doing, so Osman presented our plan and I provided background on the genesis of the idea during Kwami’s visit.
Then off with Osman, driven by the school’s driver, Isaac, for lunch. It was the second time I’ve been taken out and second time I’ve been taken to an air-conditioned restaurant, this one a good twenty minute drive away. Hmmmm--that seems like a pattern to me. I think everyone is still trying to get a sense of how much their visitor can take all at once of Ghanaian culture and food, not to mention heat and humidity. To be truthful, the MTN (cellular phone) office where we had to go in order to register my SIM card (a new requirement starting end of this month), was just a short distance from the restaurant, in the Osu district, so perhaps there wasn’t really an ulterior motive. Osu is full of various government offices, which we passed on the journey there and back, along with the Black Stars’ soccer stadium, and a quick glimpse of Independence Park, which sits right on the shore of the Gulf of Guinea.
It’s evening now and I’m back planning for my lessons for tomorrow. The textbook here is History for Secondary Schools, by J.K. Fynn and R. Addo-Fening, written in 1991,revised in 1993, and an official publication of the Ghanaian Ministry of Education (though published in Hong Kong). The contents are divided up into three sections of about 80-90 pages each, one for each year of the curriculum in forms one through three. The last and most recent section, dealing with the history of the modern nation of Ghana, covers about 120 pages. The text is very straightforward, almost pure reading with just a couple maps, and no pictures, sidebars, etc. Each chapter ends with Suggested Questions and a Bibliography. I have to ask how closely this conforms to the questions on the West African exam. Interestingly, Osman was one of three people sitting on the national panel earlier this spring that was working to revise the history curriculum for the country. The previous government had mandated a curriculum with four years of social studies, but the current government changed it back to three, which it had been earlier. Although the number of sections in the book now matches again the number of years that history is taught, the panel did make some recommendations for revisions to reflect changes in scholarship as well as events that have occurred since the current text was published.
My lesson for tomorrow’s third form class will be on the Bantu Migrations. This makes sense for a number of reasons. First, it is the earliest chronologically of the four topics we had to choose from. Second, one of the methods for writing history that Osman mentioned today in his review with this class is linguistics, and this lesson employs linguistic geography as its principle method. Third, I am familiar with this topic already as something that I teach at Berkeley Middle and so it has been easier for me to work with for with as the first lesson I’ve had to adapt to the exigencies of teaching in Ghana. Finally, it draws on a couple of my unique qualifications or strengths, most notably my knowledge of Swahili and French. (One of the teachers whose rooms Osman walked us into to introduce me this morning was a French teacher, allowing me to try out my rusty French in greeting him and his students.) By drawing French into the lesson, it will help make a cross-disciplinary connection for the students.
We’ll start with a reminder of the fact that linguistics, and in this case linguistic geography, is one of the tools that historians use to try and understand history, as Osman noted today. I will greet the students with a short monologue in Swahili, and expect to get the same kinds of puzzled faces and reactions that I do with my own students when I try this. I’ll then explain that I am going to teach them a little Swahili, and run through basic greetings, putting the English and Swahili words in two columns on the board and allowing students to practice the phrases with each other. When I get to the word “welcome” (Eng.)/karibuni (Swah.), I ’ll add a third column for Twi, and write down the one Twi word that I know, akwaaba, which also means “welcome” and was emblazoned across the entrance to the airport, as well as being embroidered on the kente scarf I received this morning. I’ll repeat the process using all three languages for a few additional words, ending with “person/people” (Eng.), mtu/watu (Swah.), and ____/____ (Twi) [I’ll get the students to help me with this one]. Students will compare the Swahili and Twi terms to decide if they seem similar or different. (They won’t be similar.)
Next, I’ll repeat the three column linguistic comparisons with English, French and Spanish for” family,” “father,” “mother,” and “hour.” Students will provide the French and I’ll supply the Spanish. (Students will compare the French and Spanish terms to decide if they seem similar or different. (They will be similar.) We’ll try to figure out what the fact that one pair of languages is similar and the other is different says about these respective languages, leading to the idea that they are related in one way and giving me a chance to briefly identify and define the concept of language families. I’ll name Indo-European as the language family that includes French and Spanish, with other member languages reaching from northern Europe to India, then point out that Africa also has language families composed of related languages, one of which is the Bantu family.
The history text defines Bantu as “the people” and its singular muntu, as meaning “person.” We’ll compare these with the Swahili terms mtu/watu to show the similarity and point out that Swahili is one of 400 Bantu-based languages spoken in Africa. I’ll then explain that we are going to use linguistic evidence like this to examine and map out the expansion of the Bantu. This will lay the groundwork for further discussion about some of the specifics of the expansion at a later time with Mr. Umar.
The next part of the lesson is the area that required some adaptations in presentation. At Berkeley Middle, as in most schools in the United States, probably the most common way to present materials that students need to work with on paper is by making copies of the lessons and distributing individual copies to the students. At AGISS, however, and probably at most schools in Ghana, this convenient, but expensive method is not an option. The most common way for students here to record information is to copy it by hand into their notebooks, so I will try to use that methodology as much as possible (without compromising the inquiry element in the lessons), which will make the lessons I teach while here practicable for Osman and other teachers to use when I’ve gone.
To begin, I’ll have the students draw an outline sketch map of Africa in their notebooks. I’ll use the grid method that Linda taught me based on here expertise as an art teacher. I’ll draw a large grid on the whiteboard in the classroom, and have students copy this, then replicate the small gridded paper version that I have in larger scale on the board. Students will recreate the outline map in their notebooks by copying the lines square by square. We’ll see how that works—activities such as trying to produce an accurate map in this way often seem to end up taking an inordinate amount of time, when the true object is not to be absolutely accurate, but for students to have a map that they can work with for the next steps of the lesson.
The first of these next steps is to locate and label the Sahara, the Congo Basin/rainforest, and the Kalahari. I’ll give students a brief time to fill these in on their own maps if they know them, then add them on to the map on the board for students to copy. We’ll also draw attention to the U-shaped expanse between the deserts and rainforest that consists of savanna and tropical woodlands (non-rainforest), and labeling it as such. I’ll ask the students to think about which of these four regions would be the best for the Bantu-speaking peoples, who practiced variously both agriculture and cattle-herding, to live in and why. In their notebooks, they’ll create a three column chart with the four regions in the middle column, and “Good (Why?)” and "Bad (Why?)” on the sides. They will complete the chart, which should be easy for the deserts. For the Congo rainforest, I will see what student responses are and then introduce information about the tsetse fly that inhabits this forest and causes trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) in both humans and cattle, allowing them to alter their earlier responses if they wish in response to this new information. For the savanna/tropical woodland, we’ll examine how this area might appeal to both the herding and farming groups among the Bantu speakers. Finally, students will mark the most likely origin point of the Bantu groups, just south of the Benue River Basin in eastern Nigeria, near to Cameroon, with an X on the map, then write a prediction about where the Bantu would have spread from this area.
I’ll remind them that we are going to use linguistic evidence to test their predictions and understand the movement s of the Bantu speaking groups, then discuss how the Ba- prefix in Bantu is often also added as a prefix to the names of the various Bantu-speaking groups. As such, these names that begin with Ba- are linguistic evidence of where such groups have spread to in Africa. We’re going to make about a dozen copies of the ethnographic map I use for this lesson, the one inescapable resource demand for this lesson to work. This map shows the names of scores of African ethnic groups and their locations. A dozen copies of the map will be enough for groups of 4 or 5 students to share, and I’ll distribute blank transparency sheets that these groups will put over the maps to write on so that Osman can reuse the maps in the future. Using wet-erase pens should also allow him to re-use the transparencies. (It did occur to me that this could also be done with wax paper if transparencies were not available.) Students will first trace the outline of Africa from the ethnographic map onto the transparency, then draw tight rectangles around the names of all the ethnic groups beginning with the letters “Ba-” to show their distribution.
When the maps are finished, we’ll examine them to answer the following questions:
· Where did the Bantu primarily spread? {east and south}
· Where did the Bantu not spread? {north, far south, Congo Basin}
· Why did the Bantu spread where they did? [introduce idea of inference] {savanna and woodlands
provided good places for agriculture/herding}
· Why did they not spread to other places? [another inference] {deserts too dry, tsetse a threat
in the Congo}
Finally, I’ll point out that as they spread the Bantu were able to defeat, assimilate (absorb), or push out most of the peoples who were already living in the areas that the Bantu spread into. Since the Bantu were taking over the best available territory, I’ll ask students to think about what areas were left for the peoples forced out by the Bantus to move to instead. The answer, of course, is that the only lands left were the worst areas—the desert (Kalahari) and rainforest. Among the groups mentioned in the text as being displaced by the Bantus were the Khoi, San and Pygmies (though I’ll note that the latter is no longer used widely, since the people are the Mbuti). Students will have to find where on the ethnic map the Khoi and San are located, ( in southern Africa), then compare this with the physical map to find that this is right in the Kalahari Desert.) I’ll repeat the question for the Mbuti. The Mbuti aren’t shown on the map, but I’ll tell the students that they live very near to the Mongo, who, the students will find when they compare the ethnographic and physical maps, live right in the center of the Congo Basin and rainforest.
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