Thursday, 9 June 2011-Accra

Thursday, 9 June 2011

We visited the dining hall at breakfast again today.  After breakfast, students go out to an area behind the hall to wash their plate, cup and utensils.  Students here are much more responsible for taking care not just of their learning, but of the rest of their personal affairs, and of the school as a whole, than is the case in the United States.  On Thursdays, instead of having a first hour class, students remain in the dining hall for singing practice, conducted by the reverend who teaches here, and lead by the head prefect, who also leads the morning hymns.  While the girls were finishing breakfast we walked across to the assembly hall, which has a nice raised stage and orchestra pit.  Yesterday and today there are a large number of visitors at the school, here to do work associated with one of the West Africa Certificate Exams.  They have been working in groups in and around the assembly hall and some were already examining papers as we passed through.  The singing sounded great, including harmonies (they must have practice at some other time to learn these) and clapped rhythms.  When AGISS students sing a hymn, they sing all the verses.  The reverend “graded” the singing among the houses and day students (=”AGISS” house) to remind them that they need to do their best at everything.  There was lots of cheering from each group as itsscore was announced.

I had the second form today–I left the overheads they’d begun yesterday on the Bantu Migrations in my room, so we went right on to begin the Slave Trade lesson, starting with the hypothetical question "How would your community be affected if it lost 30% of its population?”  Studentsfirst created their own list of answers, then added to it as they shared with a partner and then with the class as awhole.  I had to make some adaptations to this lessonon the fly because some of the students’ responses were so unexpected.  As I circulated while they were working, I saw that many had thought of positive effects arising from the situation, centering around reduction of overpopulation, population pressure and the attendant problems.  I hadn’t thought about these types of answers at all, perhaps because, unlike the students who are still treating this exercise as purely hypothetical, my thinking was already shaped by the fact that I knew we would be moving from the hypothetical to the actual case of Ghana during the period of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.  I think the positive effects that the students thought of reflect the nature of education in Ghana as a developing nation and the way that education here is often practically oriented to that fact.  The students here have thought about issues such as population that have an impact on the welfare of the country.  So shifting gears, I had them label each item in their list of answers good or bad, sharing both the good effects and the bad effects, then ranking the three most important effects for future use. 

Finally, I introduced the PERMS analysis method that I use at Berkeley Middle.  Reviewing the meanings of each of the category headings—Political, Economic, Religious, Military, and Social—was a snap with the students here, who have a strong command of such factual material by this level.  Again, their knowledge here may reflect the fact that these topics are seemingly discussed more explicitlyhere in Ghana than in the U.S. and at an earlier age because of the concern with development related issues that I noted above.  I concluded the class by having them list questions they would want to ask if presented with such an occurrence.They have done a lot of good thinking and raised a lot of potential effects—we did touch on the uncertainty of such predictions and how they would vary from case to case.  All this preliminary thinking should make the next stage go much more quickly, when we begin looking at the case of Ghana.

After class, one of the Geography students, Veronica, came up to speak with me.  She is very disappointed that I am not teaching some geography as well and that she doesn’t get a chance to speak with me.  I’d love to at least observe a geography class and a social studies class, but I recognize that many people are not comfortable with having someone else in their classroom.  I also suspect that there is a big difference between what constitutes geography here and in the States—I saw in one of the prefect’s books that one of the Geography classes, for example, is studying the mangrove swamps of coastal Ghana right now—geography, like many other subjects, is more Ghana-centric than is the case in the U.S..  I also spoke with Veronica, who had questions about how long it takes to get through all the levels of the U.S. educational system, what older students can do to get an education, and about government support programs like welfare.  She had a number of great follow-up questions to what I told her. I was so engrossed in talking to students that I almost delayed our start with Dave and Raphael, who had come to the school just as class ended.  As it turned out, Osman had to collect signatures of the girls who will be going on the excursion (Ghanaian term for a field trip) to Cape Coast castle with us on Saturday, so I gave Dave and Raphael a mini-tour of the campus as we walked back to my place to wait for Osman.  This was an interesting conversation because it added the element of comparison not just between Ghana and U.S., but also between schools within Ghana, and between Dave’s perspective at the end of his experience, and mine as I am just getting started.

When Osman arrived, we headed off to the Cantonments District (not far from Southern Fried Chicken, where I ate the first night).  One right turn at a certain point and things went upscale in a hurry—4 meter walls with razor wire and electrical fencing on top around very new and very large residences.  The biggest walls were around the U.S. Embassy, which sits catty-cornered from our destination—the W.E.B. DuBois Pan-African Cultural Center—so some of these upscale residences may belong to American or other foreign nationals in the diplomatic corps.  W.E.B. DuBois was an African-Americanwho was the founder of the idea of Pan-Africanism, as well as being the author of numerous books, and the first African-American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard.  The center is built around the home where DuBois lived for the last two years of his life here in Ghana, arriving in 1961 at 93, at the invitation of Kwame Nkrumah, and dying two years later.  Our guide was a former Wesley Sr. High School (Raphael’s school) graduate whom he recognized.  We will be returning to the DuBois center next Friday afternoon for a student history competition.

We returned to campus to find that Rejoice had arranged for all of us to have lunch that the dining hall staff had cooked brought here to my rooms.  She pointed out several times that this made me the host, but in that role I had little more to do than sit and talk with Dave, Raphael, Mr. Lah, and Osman.  Rejoice did all the actual work, in essence standing in for Linda Jo in the role of my “wife,” doing the serving, and clearing everything up when we were finished.It was very nice to be able to host people in my own rooms here—time after time, the benefits of being housed here on the school grounds become apparent.  I presented Raphael with one of the large inflatable globes as a gift for his school.

After lunch I headed to the computer lab, but again without luck.  School computers were up and I had an e-mail typed for my family, but the connection failed just as I was ready to hit “Send.”While there I did get the chance to speak with Margaret and Deborah, two of my second form students.  In another example of how well they are treating me here at the school, Ms. Akapame had instructed the computer teacher to leave the lab keys with me when he needed to go so that I could continue to work.  He told me how to shut down the computers and power, lock up the lab, and return the keys to the headmistress’s house.

Osman came by around 5:00 to pick me up.  He had not yet been home, so we went by to say hello to Amina and Shaida, then set off to buy a couple of items—soap for my laundry and batteries for Shaida’s new toy, which had stopped working.  Osman insists that I let him take my clothes and have them washed—this is another of those things that men are supposed not to do, so as a guest I’m bowing to the local norm. 

Stopping at a different bar in the neighborhood, as we drank we talked about higher degrees and whether they are worthwhile to pursue in our respective cases, both for what they offer in new opportunities and for what they do financially.  Osman is interested in a U.S. degree if possible.  When I get home with a little more time, I’ll do a little preliminary research to send him.  We talked about further collaboration after I have left, including developing joint lessons and ideas for possible conference presentations or articles, as well as about social studies organizations (they’re trying to start one here in Ghana).  I raised the idea for the collaborative product labels activity that I want to propose at the TEA follow-up conference in August.

We stopped by Top Chef Fast Food, dodging around the construction that is continuing on the Nima/Mamobi Road, for fried rice take away (which gave me a little heartburn for the first time here), then back here to work on this for three hours.  I’ll have three or four long entries ready by tomorrow, and have a late start, so enough time to do some lesson planning before class as well.  I’ll need to do some planning tomorrow for Saturday, so we can make sure that students are thinking/observing while at Cape Coast castle in preparation for next week’s lessons on the trans-Atlantic slave trade.