First Day Teaching

First Day Teaching

School does not officially start until September as students are currently on summer vacation, but for me classes began today. Cheerful Hearts helps put on summer classes for children to help prepare them for the upcoming year and monitor the development and progress of their sponsored children. Paired with a local school in Senya, four of us (two Ghanaians, a Russian, and myself) took the Tro-Tro (minibus-taxi) to the beach to teach the eager student (which is about a 45 minute ride for 2 cedis which is about $0.55-0.60)

Even though class was suppose to start at 9:00, Ghana (and specifically summer school) is not necessarily on a particularly strict schedule so we began class at 10:00. I was working with the youngest age group which only had 9 children in class. There were a total of 25 students present which is much higher during the school year, 11 of which were sponsored children. I was in charge of basic English. During the first half of class we worked on the first 10 letters of the alphabet. We wrote the letter in our workbook and then drew a picture of a word that starts with that letter. With each letter we chanted the sound that it makes (ex. a… a… a… apple, b… b… b… ball). After finishing the first 10 letters we wrote the letters again on our sheet in both capital and lowercase print. We finished the class by played a game where we tried to think of other words that start with each letter. The class could come up with between 3-8 words for each letter and we would stop when we could not think of any more. After break (which was absurdly long and included soccer and general goober-like behavior) we wrote down the second set of 10 letters in our note book along with a picture, again chanting each sound as we went.

Most children speak basic English, but spelling was poor. We started the class with introductions, which were hilarious to me. When asked “how are you?”, there is only one response ever given throughout the entire country, “I am fine, how are you?”(Pavlov would be thrilled). Even walking around town when children yell out “Obruni, Obruni” and you wave and ask how they are, the response is always “I am fine”. Everyone in the whole of Ghana is always “fine”. We went around the class one by one with “What is your name?” and How are you?”; “I am fine”, “I am fine”. I also asked the children to come up with a word for each letter so that we could draw it. A was apple, B was ball (soccer ball obviously), C was cat, D was dog, E was elephant (which I was complemented for my elephant drawing, not so much for my dog), F was fish (practically the only source of food in the town), G was goat (which walk the streets everywhere), H was house, I was ice cream (still yet to try Ghanaian ice cream), J was jacket (which is worrying because everyone is currently cold in Ghana even though it must be high 70s or low 80s; I fear for the heat which is hiding just around the corner), K was key, L was lion, M was mango (everyone was a critic on my mango picture), N was nail, O was orange (which I can’t pronounce apparently), P was pineapple (most proud of this picture), Q was queen, R was radio, S was snake (which I have not seen any so far, thankfully), and T was television (which is always on in our house and is fairly funny to me; special effects in Ghanaian movies are super low quality and turn scary movies into comedies). The kids did a great job drawing and even humored me as I chanted the sounds each time we said a word.

The big realization after teaching in the United States, Central America, and now Africa, is that kids are kids. It is fun to see the differences in culture, but in the end they are all fun, curious, and energetic kids that are generally excited to be having fun and learning. Quirky as they may be, they still fight over pencils, go silent when called on (or jump out of their chair, apparently no middle ground), and want your attention and affection.