Having passed the halfway mark of our village stay without blogging in any real depth, I feel somewhat guilty about my silence. There are many topics I could (and probably should) write about, and hitherto I have treated none of them. Fortunately, our seemingly omniscient, lovely, and ever-helpful caretaker Clara is in possession of a laptop, which I can use to write blog entries in advance so that I can copy and paste them immediately when I reach an internet cafe. This means that today I will be posting several entries, and hopefully it means that I can maintain this blog with more care in the future. Now, it seems sensible to start with a description of my work here, my thoughts and feelings about it, its challenges and triumphs. Welcome to Senchi DA JHS.
As I have already written, although all of us Bridge Year Students stay in the same village, we teach at different village schools, and I am privileged enough to teach in Senchi, a village about 25 minutes’ walk from Oguaa, at the District Assembly Junior High School. JHS consists of three “forms,” or grades, with English, Twi, Maths, and Science taught as the core subjects along with French, Religious and Moral Education, Information Computer Technology, and Pre-Vocational Skills, among others. I currently teach science at the form one and form two levels, and so I teach a total of six one-hour classes each week. The rest of my time at school is spent preparing lessons, correcting assignments or tests, talking with students or teachers, helping with PE, or just reading a bit. Officially, the enrollment of the school is 118 pupils, which means that, depending on the day and the form I am teaching, there are between 35 and 45 kids in class. They can get rowdy and difficult to calm down at times, but I usually acquire the assistance of the science teachers—the ones actually hired to do the job—to help me out in class, not only in calming down the students, but in helping to explain concepts as well.
The whole of the JHS is a rectangular, five room building: three equal classrooms for each of the forms, as well as another room of equal size serving as the teacher workroom, and a smaller room used as the headmaster’s office that has storage space. Although the town of Senchi has power lines, the school is not connected to electricity.
Now that I’ve given a general description of the school, I can move on to my perceptions of my work. As I have said, I teach six lessons a week; one each on Monday and Tuesday, two on Wednesday and Thursday, and none on Friday, although we have PE on Fridays. I’m not sure if this seems like a lot of teaching, but…it’s really not. Except for Wednesdays and Thursdays, I feel like I have a lot of downtime, during which I feel very unproductive. It is true that I occupy that time with the things I have already mentioned, but I certainly feel at times that it isn’t very useful and that I should be doing something better with my time. That said, it would certainly be possible for me to take on another class, help another teacher with his or her classes, or otherwise take the initiative, and really, I should do that. It is a trumpet screaming at me, “Carpe diem! Take every opportunity! Give your fullest!” etc., and yet I can make myself deaf to the clarion call. “You still have time,” I tell myself, “You owe it to yourself to not rush into this, to take time and get comfortable. Besides, life can be a challenge for you here; no one will blame you for not doing more, you’re already doing a lot.” And yes, there is some truth in all these justifications; but isn’t that always the struggle? There is always something more I can be doing, always someone else I should be helping, and yet this desire conflicts with my own desire for comfort, my own needs and wants, which, albeit selfish, make a compelling argument. I have been contemplating this especially over the past few weeks; that is, I have been thinking about what it means to serve, what it means to give of oneself, and what constitutes my share of giving: am I required to sacrifice myself entirely, to please all others before myself? or is there a balance between what I give and what I can retain for myself? And, if so, where is that balance? There are lots of ideas, lots of ideas floating around, in and out of my head and heart, and it’s hard to make sense of them. But the fact remains that I am here now, and I am living and teaching and thinking now, and sometimes it is very necessary to forget all these lofty thoughts and just live. So, while I haven’t resolved these questions in my mind, I suppose I feel that I don’t have to quite yet.
Up to now, I haven’t talked about what it is actually like to teach in a Ghanaian village school. Well, to begin with, it is wrought with challenges, more so because I am a foreigner, but even for the Ghanaians working here. The school day starts officially at 7:45 with the morning assembly, when students gather in the rear of the school to say an opening prayer, the national anthem, and to hear any announcements for the day. The day really begins earlier for the students, though, who are expected—machetes and brooms in hand—to arrive early and clean the school compound. At 8:00, classes begin. Now, the policy of The Ghana Education Service (GES) is that classes be taught in a mix of the local language of the region (Asante Twi in the Asante Region) and English, the official language of Ghana. As students get older, there should be more English used, until by form three of JHS, classes should be taught entirely in English. In form one, for example, teachers are supposed to use about 70% English and 30% Twi. The main problem with this, however, is that the students’ English is simply not advanced enough to understand a class that is taught mostly in English. Their textbooks are entirely in English, but only a select few students can comprehend what they are reading in such books. The reasons for this difficulty are complex; teachers themselves, while having good English, do not really use it with the students outside of class, and, because the students struggle to understand English in class, teachers end up using Twi to help them grasp concepts. This is a problem because these students don’t have much opportunity to practice and learn English outside of school. At home, most of their parents can’t or don’t speak English, and everyone is speaking Twi all the time. As a result, English proficiency is extremely difficult to acquire, which is why I admire the students who do speak English well all the more.
My Twi is not spectacular; I can’t get by around town, buying things and making small talk, but there is no way I could teach exclusively in Twi, especially in a subject like science. In addition, I am not supposed to be doing that: all the teachers are supposed to be using English anyway! I have certainly seen that when the kids are taught things in Twi, they understand them. They are not at all incapable; they are smart, eager kids who have a million factors hindering their education and only a handful helping it. Despite this, even if they learn and understand something in Twi, they cannot translate it into English—they can’t express themselves in the language of the colonizers. If asked a question in English, they may be able to answer in Twi, but often they can’t understand written directions or questions. This is a huge problem because all of their examinations are in English, including the Basic Education Certificate Examinations (BECE), taken at the end of Form three, which essentially decide whether or not these kids can continue their educations. Further, we are in a rural area of Ghana. It is not so impoverished as you may think; nevertheless, it is not a wealthy area, and so many resources are lacking. As I have mentioned, there is no electricity in the school, which of course means no computers or electronic lab equipment or teaching equipment; there is no library like I had at Branford High School; no guidance counselors, no student internship offices, no auditorium, no music room, no art wing. I can’t say that any of this was unexpected, but it does demonstrate the massive disparity between the education these kids are receiving and the one I received or that residents of more affluent sections of Ghana have access to. Hmm, differences…I suppose that’s why I came to Ghana.
The portrait I have painted here may be somewhat bleak; while it is often upsetting and difficult to see this injustice, the system is certainly not without its merits, and there are many dedicated to trying to improve it. Many teachers and headmasters are dedicated to their schools, and the GES has a lot of policies in place designed to ensure that teachers and schools are doing their jobs appropriately. I think those policies are helping. Also, there are many success stories that boost my morale and confidence. Despite the difficulties, many students perform very well on the BECE and get into good high schools and, later on, good universities in Ghana. Just the other day, walking home from Senchi, I bumped into a boy in Senior High School (the level after JHS) who was on vacation and back home in Oguaa to help out with his father’s farm. Talking with him, I learned that he had gone through the Oguaa school system, scored a seven on his BECE—the top score is a six, the lowest a 45—and is now going to a perfectly decent Senior High School. He told me that he wants to study government at the University of Ghana at Legon in Accra so that he can become a lawyer. And he can do that, I know he can, provided that he works hard enough. It’s stories like this and the knowledge that students can succeed that gives me hope.
I am not sure where my place is in all of this. I don’t know where can best apply my talents, knowledge, and observations. I doubt that it is in the actual teaching of these students because, while I am not incompetent or detrimental to their education, I am certainly not improving it by leaps and bounds. This experience has allowed me, however, to witness the system, see its strengths and its flaws, its successes and failures. It will take a lot more time, dedication, and reflection to best apply myself. Although I am not sure what I will do, again, I think it is not yet the time to figure all that out. I have to continue to observe, continue to live my life here, continue to strive to understand. That’s why I’m here; I think that’s why a lot of us are here. At any rate, I have to go prepare a lesson for school tomorrow; I’ll be teaching diffusion and osmosis to the form two’s. Until next time, my friends.
