Ali told me some stories of her
time in Zabilla. One of her jobs was to
introduce the teaching of ‘phonics’ to 6 or so schools in Zabilla and build
capacity for the teachers to take on ‘Phonics teaching’ on their own by the time
she left. She did an incredible job; demonstrating
lessons, team teaching and eventually handing over the reins to those teachers
who were capable. Phonics for those of
you who are not familiar is a method of teaching people to read by correlating
sounds with letters or groups of letters in an alphabetic writing system. The ‘ch’ sound Ghanaians have a particular
problem with. In fact I remember Ali
telling me that a man in a village introduced himself as ‘Keif’ which she interpreted as ‘Keith’ and went on to announce she
knew many people by the name of Keith in the UK, whist at the same time
thinking what an unusual name to have in Ghana. Shortly after this encounter
she was corrected and told this man was in fact the ‘chief’ of the village and was unable to pronounce ‘ch’!
On a similar note Ali was getting
rather fed up when driving or walking around the villages and being shouted at
by the children saying ‘Nasaara! Nasaara!’ meaning white person in the local
dialect. She tried (when she wasn’t on
her moto driving), to encourage the children to use ‘Madame Alice’ (the nearest
to Alison the Ghanaians understand) saying that they must use her name, not
call her ‘white person’. This is
something head teachers and teachers were also encouraging. Ali had started to introduce the ‘ch’ sound
in schools and had put together some teaching and learning flip chart materials
to aid the learning through pictures and writing. She had one wonderful flipchart page which
summed up the ch’ sound….’children chasing chickens’ which when spoken and
chanted in the classroom normally involved ‘ch, ch, children, ch, ch, chasing,
ch, ch, chickens’ with the obligatory flapping of the chicken wings (teachers
and children’s arms) when saying chicken. So when one day she was starred at as she was
driving her moto by one small child and instead of shouting out ‘Nassara! Nassara!’
he simply lauched into ‘ch, ch, chicken’ whilst flapping his little arm wings as
she drove by - she felt quite victorious at the passing of 'Nassara' and of course 'Madame ch, ch, chicken' has quite a ring to it….
Now I too am spending a
significant amount of time in one school it seems I also have acquired a new name;
Madame Bling Bling. Let me explain, because to me, without the explanation one
could mistake that for my ‘porn star name’ or ‘lady of the night name’ of which
I must fiercely deny immediately for it is the name Form 3 at one particular
JHS in Bolga has given me. The school
is one I have visited to do the ‘Science resource box’ workshop. During this workshop one of the practical
activities I share with teachers is how to teach students about electricity
without using electricity (useful as electricity can be an issue here in Ghana). Using role
play I get the students to pretend to be electrons within a circuit and the
room is reorganised to become the circuit.
A couple of students are given the role of being the cells and provide energy
to the electrons and the electrons drop off the energy to the student who is
taking the role of the bulb and on receiving the energy the bulb goes
‘bling’…’bling bling’ if it gets two packets of energy. Introducing role play
to Ghanaian teachers who are used to simply ‘chalk and talk’ methods of
teaching is difficult when you need to express that their classroom management
skills need to be modified alongside this and even though the students
are up and moving around they can still have fun. This is best shown practically by getting them to act as the students. During the workshop at this school I realised
there was not enough teachers to adequately explain the concept so this was the
first school I enlisted the help of some students which just so happened to be
form 3 and were asked to ‘bling bling’ their day away by Madame Ellie but also
had a lot of fun doing it.
In fact on that same day as the
workshop the school obtained 24 laptops from the Ghana government. It also happens to be the school to which the
owner of my local spot (bar) is headmistress. A lovely woman. So when I sensed her concern over the safe
storage of 24 laptops, how she was to charge them and the need to get them used
by form 3 before they write their ICT exam in April and move on to SHS I felt compelled
to help. I have spent the last couple of weeks writing a funding proposal for
the MTN foundation which I hope will be successful and will provide funding for
an ICT teacher laptop, projector, headphones, computer mice, extension cords, additional
electrical sockets, secure and safe storage.
Why can she not use her
capitation I hear you ask. She hasn’t
received her capitation for this term, let alone last term and the capitation
for her school is just 100GHG. For some
perspective on that amount; one computer mouse costs 10GHC, so you see her
hands are tied. In Ghana the PTA in a
good school is very active and raises lots of money to support the capitation
given by the government, but clearly it cannot be raised immediately and the
laptops were given ‘out of the blue’ with no indication they were on their way…
as is the way things work in Ghana. No
planning.
The laptops were sent to solve
the issue of the very poor results that occurred throughout the country when
the students wrote their ICT exam last year (the first year the ICT exam was
introduced). Can you believe that last year the pass rate for ICT for this school was
17%? I can - when you are asking
students to learn something so practical in a purely theoretical way. I couldn’t do it. It does seem very narrow minded of the
government not to have considered the consequences of handing over a bunch of
laptops to schools with electricity as if that alone will solve the issue. If the laptops are to survive in such a dusty
environment, maintenance needs to be considered. What of the increased electricity bill? And who will pay for the internet connection
to support the internet section of the syllabus in year 1, 2 and 3? (Last year they learnt about the internet by simply being told about it....goodness me!) I imagine
this huge amount of money which has been put in to buying the laptops will quickly
become a waste of money when they laptops fall into disrepair and there is no
money or no one to repair them, or they are stolen as there is no where secure
to put them. This school is lucky, the head teacher has a step son who is half
Russian, he was schooled in the US and is a bit of a computer geek; a lecturer
at the local Polytechnic. She has the
support for maintenance from him (if not the funds) so is in a better position than most
head teachers who have just received the laptops. In fact he has been very supportive in putting
together the budget for the funding proposal.
I have also offered my services
to support the ICT teacher in the teaching.
For those of you who don’t know, ICT teaching is something I have done
in the past (‘small small’ as they say in Ghana). For those of you who do know me (I was never
a great ICT teacher!), don’t worry… some of these children haven’t even touched
a laptop… I’m managing! It’s during
these classes with Form 3 that the name Madame Bling Bling’ has grown. I will support this class for the next couple
of months until they write their exams. They are lucky; they are a class of 22 and can have one computer
each. Form 2 are a class of 53 so they
will have to share. Form 1… well, you can see the upward trend beginning… let’s
just say even with resources, schools still have challenges and they really
aren’t easy to get over.
 |
| Form 3 hard at work during their second practical ICT lesson |
 |
| Form 3 showing their appreciation |
 |
| going to have to split those girls up! |
 |
| Form 3's ICT Master. |
