New Names

I now have my own bicycle so I’ve been enjoying going for rides whenever I want to without having to first find a bike to borrow. For me running isn’t a very fun here because of the heat and it makes me stand even more than I already do. Right now the landscape is beautiful because it’s the rainy and farming season. I’ll try to take and post some photos soon. My favorite place to ride is to the dam farther away from my house. It’s good for me to get out and greet people too. Sometimes I get so into the groove of greeting people that once I’ve passed the more populated section with houses I catch myself almost greeting cows and other animals just because I see them out of the corner of my eye and think they’re humans. Greetings are so important here and it’s really an acknowledgement of someone’s existence. I like that idea of validating people just by greeting them. Since having my own bicycle, I’ve picked up a couple of people who were footing it (walking). Only a small girl and then a small new form 1 students since I don’t think I’m fit enough to have an adult riding on the back of my bike.

Last week I worked a lot on creating our new timetable (schedule) of classes and felt like a counselor. We also finally conducted entrance exams for our form 1 students and some had to be demoted back to primary 6 if they didn’t pass. Of course there’s been drama regarding the promotion and demotions for all the forms. One girl who has to repeat form 2 for a second time even got down on her knees to beg me to promote her. Needless to say I didn’t but that was too much for me. I got a little frustrated because someone how I became in charge of tasks at the school that really aren’t my responsibility. I was happy when Friday came because it was a holiday and I went to our Tamale office for the weekend. I already needed a break after only a few weeks back to school! But the beginning of school is stressful so I’m sure it’ll get better.

During the very beginning of school, I mentioned to some of the teachers that we’d have a holiday toward the end of the month. They didn’t know what it was which was pretty funny to me that I was able to tell them Founder’s Day. I used the internet to research it and learned it’s a newer holiday created in 2009 by the late President Mills to honor the country’s first President and freedom fighter Kwame Nkrumah.

I started teaching my form 1 babies this week and have been taking their photos again like I did last year to help me learn their names and also demonstrate how ICT tools can make life easier. It’s nice that I only have 1 class where I don’t know their names so it’s going a lot faster. I think it’s really important to know names in order to help with classroom management. Instead of just saying “Hey you there- stop talking,” I can call people out by name “Dorcas! Gilbert! Zanetti!” These are few of my favorite new names.

Marisi (Writing)

This photo of me with my APCD (Peace Corps supervisor) JoeBee was taken on Wednesday during his visit to my village.  JoeBee has worked for Peace Corps for 14 years but is retiring at the end of this month.  This trip to the Northern regions to see Education volunteers is his last one.  He will definitely be missed!  I’m always happy to have guests so I enjoyed his visit.  Plus he was very gracious and brought up my luggage in the vehicle thank goodness.  Travelling with bags all the way back to the Upper East would’ve been such a hassle.  Even without bags, my travel motto here is to expect to be miserable on travel days and then it can only improve from there!

We had our staff meeting for the term on Friday and it was pretty much business as usual.  I’ll be teaching ICT for the whole school and then also Math Form 2 again.  This means that much of my lesson planning is already done so that frees up my time to work on other stuff.  I’m also the health madam again and now officially the library madam.  Last year I helped with the ‘library’ but wasn’t really in charge of it.  Speaking of the library, in the afternoon on Friday after the staff meeting while Madam Diana and I were working on totaling marks for the promotion (yes we waited until the third week of school to promote our students- o Ghana) in the office tons of students were walking through to get to the store room where we have the library shelves.  Our poor library prefect Ruth was overwhelmed with people wanting to borrow dictionaries and story books.  I asked her if she’d made an announcement about folks getting books and she said no.  I’m not sure why all of a sudden students decided to go library crazy but I like it! And I hope it continues…

My children have returned to keep me company after school and on the weekends.   I have a basket full of toys in my living room so that’s the real draw.  While I was home, I picked up some small dry erase strips and tiny markers (at the dollar spot at Target- love that place) for them to practice their writing.  I still have coloring pages for them as well but want to get away from that a little bit because I end up just burning all the pages later since that’s what we do with our garbage.  The writing has been a big hit so far (Madam mi a yali a marisi- Madam I want to write) and hopefully it will help them in school.  I think I’m readjusting pretty well back to village life though it’s still difficult sometimes especially with challenges at school.  But I just keep reminding myself how quickly the time passes here and now I’m on the downhill slope of this journey.  Hope everyone back home is enjoying football season, the cooler September weather, and pumpkin spice lattes.  Drink one for me!

Marking Hilarity

I’ve been meaning to blog about some funnies my students made on their ICT end of term exam.   My form 1 babies (as I like to call them) had a question ‘Describe to your ICT teacher….how to do some function on the computer.’  Well since some of them have low English skills a few students thought they were being asked to describe me instead.  I’m not sure how they thought that related to computers but o well.  Here are a few of my favorites, saving the best for last:

My class ICT master you are very good in my class. Every day you are come to teach.  (How sad is it that just showing up and teaching on a daily basis constitutes a good teacher in their book?)

My ICT madam is a (insert illegible word). She teach very good in Gbedema JHS.  She is good.

Good morning my ICT teacher have small nose and the teacher have big eye and fair in complesion.  (Apparently I am a Cyclops)

We haven’t promoted our students yet to the next form (grade) so effective classes haven’t begun yet.  Mostly we’re all revising the end of term exam from last year.  One teacher isn’t going to show up for another couple of weeks so his marks won’t even factor into determining the promotion.  We have a staff meeting Friday where we’ll discuss sharing subject.  I’m ready to know which form(s) I’ll be teaching math so I can start preparing.  

I found out today that a new JHS is starting in one of the sections of our village.  This year they will only have form 1 students but that should help reduce the number of form 1s we get.  One of the biggest challenges we teachers face at school is the class size so I think this will be great for the community.  I was even thinking recently about how to go about advocating for another JHS in our village but thankfully other folks beat me to it.  Here’s to change!