Striped Purple Uniforms: An attempt at explaining a typical day at the school (and pictures!)

I want to give a bit of a summary about what a normal day at the school is like for me, even though it's hard to say what "normal" is since it can be so different everyday. Each Tuesday and Friday morning around eight, Mollishmael picks up a few of my friends and I in Susan, the black Suzuki 4x4 that rarely makes it through the week without breaking down. We ride about fifteen minutes to get to the school, picking up people walking in that direction along the way (according to Mollishmael, a car should never have empty seats).

To get from the street to the school, you must walk down a dirt path and across two “bridges” made of flimsy 2x8 boards that go over channels in the ground meant to divert rainwater. We are hoping to build actual, permanent bridges there at some point this semester because the boards tend to break or wash away, and also partly because my ASP experience gets me really excited about building anything. Anyway, when the kids see you coming, they start screaming your name. As soon as you’re through the gate, there’s suddenly somewhere around five to fifteen kids attached to your legs or climbing on your back. Teaching at GGYN is definitely one way to boost your ego.

I usually spend each day teaching the second grade class, so I’ll head over to their tables and benches and say something like, “Good morning, class! How are you?” to which the class responds in perfect unison, “I’m fine, thank you. And you?” From there, I just start teaching whatever I think should follow the last lesson that I taught. Although I know that some help is better than nothing, it’s really hard to know that the students can’t have a more competent and consistent teacher than me. There are five teachers at the school for classes one through four and a nursery. If one teacher can’t make it some day, then teachers need to alternate between classes. Since this happens pretty regularly and all of the students are far too much for five teachers anyway, it feels good to know that the other volunteers and I are definitely helping out.

Even though I’ve never really felt drawn to teaching before, I love it more everyday. That’s probably primarily because I had no idea what I was doing at first, but it also gets more fun the more I get to know the kids. They have such hilarious personalities: the kid who makes jokes and can’t sit still, the other that always makes a huge deal out of handing out notebooks and pencils, etc. As I teach each class I also keep remembering little things (songs, pictures, etc.) that my first and second grade teachers did to help me learn. Teaching at GGYN has really made me appreciate just how important primary education is as the basis of everything else, and also how tough it is to teach a class like this something as simple as subtraction. That being said, I want to say thank you to any teachers who are reading this. You’re saints, for sure.

One particularly tough aspect of teaching that I’ve found is keeping everyone engaged when some kids get things very quickly and others won’t tell you when they’re lost. Even though most of the kids primarily speak the local languages, Twi or Ewe (pronounced like “tree” and “ay-way”), Ghanaian schools are all taught in English; this makes it particularly hard for those who just started school to keep up with what’s going on.

Occasionally it will rain, meaning that our class will have to pause to stack the benches on tables and get notebooks and other belongings under shelter. If it's a really light rain we can just move the class closer to the mango tree where we're protected by it's leaves, but otherwise we get under the shelter of a nearby shed and wait it out.

From ten to eleven there’s an hour-long break, which is definitely one of the best parts of the day. Kids from all of the classes love to play games with the volunteers, and we’ve had fun teaching them all different things (arm wrestling was a particularly big hit). They’ve also taught me some patty-cake type games, and they love to play with my hair and copy pictures that I draw on the white board. Many of the kids bring traditional Ghanaian banku and soup in big thermoses for lunch, some kids buy food from roadside stands nearby, and unfortunately some kids don’t come with any lunch at all. GGYN used to have meals available for kids (as seen in “Under the Mango Tree”), but the budget couldn’t handle it as the school grew.

After break we get back to teaching until school ends at one o’clock. From there the other volunteers and I might talk to Mollishmael about budget things or future plans for the school, or we might just hang out under the mango tree and enjoy the beautiful weather of shaded Ghana. We’ve all gotten used to staying later after school just to hang out, which always leads to a lot of fun. For example, yesterday I got a painting lesson from Mollishmael’s brother! And last Friday, two of my friends and I got to be in a Ghanaian inspirational Gospel music video. It’ll be on youtube, so yeah, get excited for that post.

Although I haven't gotten around to taking pictures myself, Joshua gave me some of his to post, so enjoy!

A view of most of the school.

The nursery (seen on far left of previous picture).

Leaning the difference between one snake and two snakes. Good thing I'm not teaching something more complicated. I really just love drawing on the board.