Work and School -- Michael

So how about a discussion of what Kristin and Michael, Mariah and Sam are doing here?  First some background.

The Golden Sunbeam school is a private school in a country that has a free public school system (yes, public really means government just as in America).  The school was established in 1989 intending to be a full K-8 school in Adenta, a suburb of Accra, Ghana to fight the ignorance among the villagers around Accra.  The school began under the leadership of Emmanuel’s (our son-in-law) mother and father.  Since 1989, the school has broadened to include a high school that was intended to be taught at a new location – Ayikuma, a town further out of Accra (I liken Palmer to Ayikuma, Eagle River to Adenta, and Anchorage to Accra for distances and size although Accra’s population is many times more than Anchorage -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accra ).  The Ayikuma high school campus was finished about 4 years ago, but recently, the high school students have been moved back to the Adenta campus for two reasons:1) the Ayikuma campus has expanded into a vocational school centering on Nursing and Agribusiness (in cooperation with BYU Idaho) – the Ghanaian ministry of education didn’t want to mix high school students with post-high school students, so in order to become accredited as a nursing school, the high school students had to be removed, and 2) in the past year, Ghana has experienced some moderately steep inflation and a devaluation of the Ghanaian currency (known as CDs) relative to the US dollar (the exchange rate is now around 3+ CDs for 1 US dollar); with those economic factors, enrollment in the school is down, so the decision was made to consolidate the high school students to the Adenta campus and expand the Vo-Tec offerings in Ayikuma – there are plenty of high school opportunities in Ghana, but a shortage of nursing and other Vo-Tec schools.  The school has its own busses for transporting students, its own hostels for boarding students and its own kitchen facilities for feeding them as well.  The Ayikuma campus sits on about 5 acres in a very rural setting and the Adenta campus is on about 1 acre in a very urban setting (http://www.goldensunbeam.com/ ).  A predominant cost to the school is the feeding of the students, so the Ayikuma campus has greatly expanded its farming facilities (fish (aquaponics), chickens (yes, roosters awaken us every morning before the sunrises), geese, and cows for protein, vegetable gardens, and recently, soybean production for soy milk).  The following was not a paid advertisement of the school, but merely some background.

Mariah and Sam are enrolled in their respective grades (8^th and 5^th), and so far are enjoying their time here after some initial adjustments (“the teacher doesn’t understand me,” “ the schedule is confusing,” “I don’t know how much the snack food costs,” etc. – please note that the English spoken here, is not American (or even British) English, but an African/Caribbean version that I have a hard time understanding myself (never mind the various local languages used)).  Both took entrance exams to determine what their classes should be and while each excelled in some areas, they were deficient in others; Ghanaian education is larger a matter of memorizing facts and figures, not critical thinking and problem solving (one of the reason’s Emmanuel wants our educational background here to help change teaching to move toward critical thinking and problem solving rather than just memorizing lecture notes), so Mariah excelled at English and needs greater exposure to science and math, while Sam excelled at Math and needs science and English.  Of course Mariah has the delightful experience of having her dad as her math and science (physics) instructor (I’ve enjoyed having her in class – it’s been insightful (and pleasing) to see her in action).

Kristin teaches music to the elementary through junior high school grades with her usual infectious enthusiasm.  She’s also started her violin class in the 5^th grade, and hopes to start her 7-12 year classes once the busing schedule gets ironed out.  I’ll let Kristin tell more of her experiences herself.

Two days after we arrived (Thursday, 18 Sep), Emmanuel reported that two teachers didn’t show up for work (math and agriculture) – they went hunting instead, so Michael was plugged into teach 8^th and 10^th grade math under the Cambridge syllabus (more on that syllabus later), and the two BYU Idaho interns who were going to assist in teaching agribusiness, were asked to take it over with the help of the farm manager in Ayikuma (BYU I is affiliated with the Ayikuma school and its agribusiness – they donated the soy milk production equipment and have sent two interns each term to assist and for the interns to gain real world experience).  Additionally, the physics teacher was a recent hire with no experience, so Emmanuel wanted Michael to teach 8^th and 10 grade physics.  One of observations of Ghanaian culture is that planning is somewhat lacking – it’s more survival of the moment.

The curriculum at the high school level is two-fold: 1) the Ghanaian system that prepares a student for the exam known as WASSCE (West African Secondary School Certificate of Education) – yes, Ghanaian schools have external final exams, but unlike patsy America, they mean something (think HSGQE) – the tests are given at the end of a person’s high school experience, and if you don’t pass, you don’t pass and move on; if a student does well enough on that exam, they are generally accepted into a Ghanaian university, and 2) the Cambridge system, developed in the UK that prepares students for the IGCSE exam (International GCSE – some kind of Brit acronym for their school system ) http://www.cie.org.uk/ (Again, not a paid advertisement, just background) – oh, by the way, IB isn’t IB, it’s a recloaking of the British school system.  Go ahead and investigate the Cambridge curriculum and then compare it to the IB system and you’ll see Cambridgeisms all over the IB system.  If a student does well enough on the exam (as well as their “A-levels” – another Brit invention), then they can gain entrance into most international universities.  I’ve been asked to teach the 8^th and 10 grade Cambridge students (the curriculum is more rigorous than the Ghanaian system).  For 7^th grade and onward, students have the option of choosing three specialties – science, art, and business.  Each of those options has classes associated with them (science includes physics, chemistry, and biology, arts includes literature, geography, and something else (don’t ask me), and business includes accounting, economics, and business studies); the required classes for all 7+ students includes French, math, computers, and English.  As currently scheduled, I have physics students for four hours a week, and math students  three hours a week (the students have an additional math class – “Added Math” that meets 3 hours a week); consequently, it’s as if my science students are taking physics, chemistry, and biology every year in this school (finally I have some time to instruct a curriculum instead of racing through one poorly), and the math class is equivalent to one and a half math classes in the US (it’s an integrated math syllabus).  Classes go for one hour and school starts at 8 a.m. and ends by 4 p.m. with some periods being “free time.”  There is no Saturday school and school is year round with 6 week breaks every 4 months (three terms in a year).

So far my impression of the school, curriculum, and students is mixed.  The students are good-natured, but I had some mystical ideal of young people starved for education craving for instruction (yeah right), and quite frankly, they are similar to young people around the world – teenagers.  They have less to distract them here, true, but attention span, organizational skills, etc., are still being formed with varying degrees of success.  The students appear to be more respectful of teachers and authority, but I wonder if it’s more a surface effect – I had my Hittite discussion and male “I dunno” response lecture the second day with the 10^th graders because of their poor attitudes, and since then, they’ve brightened up considerably.  My 8^th graders are actually pretty fun to teach (they’re still eager to learn though they wear quickly during the class period), though they struggle with getting information to stick in their brains more than a day.  The facilities are attempting to go virtual as much as possible – paper is at a premium, the copier machine is a dinosaur, text books expensive and rare, etc.  I applaud the move, but we haven’t quite arrived yet.  I’m currently attempting to learn the school’s e-learning system “EMLearner.”  So I’ll have more to say about that in the future. 

Upon arrival, I scrambled to find some math textbooks to help me as reference guides (boy am I glad I taught geometry last year at Palmer); I have plenty of physics books that I brought with me, but I hadn’t anticipated teaching this math curriculum (what I wouldn’t do for a good solid geometry and pre-calculus text from America – the textbooks that are here are substandard).  I’ve been a little frustrated at the commotion within the school during the day (the schedule of classes just changed yesterday and school has been in session for over a week!), and the primary grade students make quite a bit of noise outside the classrooms (the classrooms themselves are adequate except for the whiteboards which no longer work well – can’t erase well) – it’s hot here, so the doors and windows stay open with ceiling fans running throughout the day (noisy and constant blowing air).  The internet lacks stability – one day you can connect to the WIFI with excellent transmission speed, and the next, you can’t even log on, or you get logged off randomly throughout the day.  Just like the electric power, things are unreliable (nearly each day there are “lights out” or rolling blackouts throughout Accra due to a lack of sufficient electrical generation).  I guess the best attribute of Ghanaians is their ability to handle it all – they don’t get too shook up about most anything.  Unfortunately, that’s also a downfall – they lack passion to get out of the squalor that abounds here.  The students here are from around the world besides Ghana (Nigeria, Botswana, US, UK, Holland, etc.), and come predominantly from upper-middle class Ghanaian families.  While their socioeconomic status may sound like a good thing, it can be a detriment since some of those wealthier families just kind of “dump” their student off here to be educated while they chase their financial dreams (I have one student whose parents are Ghanaian, but living in the US and brought him back to Ghana to “straighten him out.”).  My class sizes are small (4 to 9 students) since I’m teaching the Cambridge system which is the harder of the two curriculums and somewhat feared by students or not desired by parents (fear of failure or lack of desire for a better future).  I enjoy the size since the students are pretty much plugged in to me and want to learn (following the Hittite chat).  I was taken aback by the lack of curriculum guides, pacing material, etc. at the school, so I’ve been very busy attempting to take the syllabus material from Cambridge and make pacing guides for physics and math instruction for me and my co-worker.  I asked what other teachers do, and the answer was something like “whatever we’ve been doing.”  And that’s one of the reasons for me coming – to break the teachers out of just doing what’s been done in the past.  Most of these teachers simply teach what and how they were taught which consists of facts and figures by lecture.  So I have my work cut out for me.  We’ll see how it goes.  I must say, I do like the dress code here – teachers in white shirts (I skimp with short sleeves), ties, slacks, and dress shoes, and students in uniforms.  It makes a positive difference. 

Well I think those are enough thoughts for now.

Michael