First Day Teaching and Fufu

I woke up this morning and thought, "Well, this is it, my first day teaching Ghanain students." And teaching is what it was. I got to the school around 9:30 (the school day starts at 8:15, but I figured they'd be fine without me for an hour or so) and went to Cynthia's classroom. Well, Cynthia was not there (she told me she didn't come to school a lot), but Auntie Adua was there finishing up her lesson on Ga. Once she was done with that, it was time for me and my English. I didn't feel comfortable leaving the book on the first day (I didn't really have anything else in mind, and I didn't know if we could actually teach outside of the book). First we read a short passage about road accidents. It was... well, it was what it was. I asked for volunteers to read. About four students raised their hands, and throughout the class, only about six or seven students would raise their hands, and only two students would raise their hands pretty much all the time (that's so me!). When no one who hadn't read raised their hand, I decided to call on a random student. I waited for her to start reading. She wouldn't. I told her not to be shy, to just stand up and read. Then Auntie Adua said, "She cannot read. Call on someone else."

During the students' break, I learned that a lot of students can't read. I was talking to the other English teacher whose name escapes me right now, and she was telling me that not all the students enter grade school from the very beginning. I should explain that all public education in Ghana is taught in English, while no one actually grows up with English as a native language (unless, I suppose, a parent knows English and decides to teach their child early on, before schooling... but even then, Ghanains first language will not be English). So students learn all their English at school. The teacher was explaining to me that many students come from small villages where they don't take education very seriously, and so when their families move here, they are put into Grade 3, 4, 5, 6 and so on because of their age, even if their abilities are not up to that grade. So while there are several students in the class I teach who can read very well, there are some students who cannot read at all, and who can't really even speak much English at all. I find this very unfortunate, but a country with so many different languages need a lingua franca. There are about 30 different ethnic groups in Ghana, each with their own language or dialect. Most Ghanains know more than one language, some of them lots and lots of languages (Auntie Adua, for example, speaks Ga, Twi, Fante, English, and I think one or two more languages). Twi is pretty common, at least in the southern half of the country, because it is the language of the Ashantis, the largest ethnic group in Ghana (the Ashantis used to have an empire that is larger than Ghana is today). So back to my orignial point, a country with so many languages need a common language, and I suppose for most African nations the easiest solution is to use the language of the country that ruled them in colonial times. For one, many would have learned this language when they were colonized. Two, these languages (English, French, Portuguese, etc.) are major languages of commerce worldwide, so it makes sense to try to students to learn one of these languages. But what happens to those who don't? They may be very intelligent, but they don't have a chance of making it in school. It's really sad. I mentioned to the English teacher the possibility of starting some sort of after-school remedial reading program, for students who never had the chance to learn the basics. She liked the idea, but she told me it would be hard to get students to actually come to it. So I think I might consult with the head teacher and maybe see if any fellow students have ideas for how to carry it out. I'm not thinking of anything too complicated, just maybe 30 or 45 minutes after school to go over some of the basics of reading and English. Otherwise, I'm teaching and the students will never know what's going on and they'll just get further and further and further behind. And I think it sucks when students fall behind because of circumstance, especially when it's because of language. Many students in America fall behind simply because they come from a country that doesn't speak English. Many children who speak African American English also fall behind because of language barriers. (Although in both of those cases, discrimination plays a part as well). So hopefully I can help some of these students. At least I'll try...

So after the reading passage, there were ten vocabulary words that were used in the passage. Most of the students did not know what they were. There were words like "automotive," "inadequate," "impoverished," "insufficient," "woefully" (who the hell says "woefully" these days?), "prosecute," and a few others. This was easy enough. I explained the words to the best of my ability, offering examples and pointing out their uses in the reading passage. Then after that, there were a few questions about the reading passage, really simple questions. The students were not answering them very well, though. The question would be worded the exact same way as one of the 12 or 13 sentences in the passage, and they would not be able to tell me an answer. Eventually we made it through, though, and they wrote the answers down in their little exercise books. (Overall, I'd say their textbook SUCKS and I'd really like to not teach from it, but we'll see how things go). Then we did a little grammar lesson on quantifiers. Basically it was just a lesson (if you could call it that) on the words "more" and "many." The book didn't even point out the difference between the words, though. It was really stupid. So I explained to the students that the word "more" is used for comparisons and the word "many" is used just to denote a large amount. It's really hard for me to know if the students actually understand the lesson or not because I'm not really aware of their level of English or how well they can understand my accent. To compensate, I tried my best to speak loudly, slowly, and with much diction. I think they can understand me well enough, although sometimes I'm not sure what they are saying. For the last 30 minutes of the school day, I went over to the 6th grade class (which apparently also did not have a teacher... what's up with this school?) and we did a little reading passage together. This class was definitely more advanced in their reading and speaking skills, and they were also more eager to volunteer. I did not get to work with Grade 4 today, but hopefully soon I will. I'm not sure what will come of this semester, but so far it seems as though I'm going to be a teacher instead of a teacher's assistant. (Other students have informed me that there situations are similar. Jackie told me the first day she walked into the classroom and the teacher said to the students, "Sit! This is Madam Jackie. She is now going to teach you." Then he sat back and she taught the class. Kenneth warned us that teachers would do this to us.). I'm actually fine with the situation, but aren't two teachers better than one? We'll see...

After school, I went to a little fruit stand right by the school and bought some pineapples and oranges. Then I walked a little further and saw Jackie, Danae, and Debora sitting with a few teachers from the school (La Yahoushua, if I didn't mention that) at a little place called "The Yellow Spot." Here is where I had my first fufu, which is sort of like the dish here... like hamburgers in America or falafel in the Middle East. Fufu is mashed up yams and/or plaintains and/or cassava in a soup. I had mine in a peanut soup with tuna. Some of the students who have tried it say they don't like it, but personally, I thought it was pretty amazing. The texture is unlike anything I've ever had before... it's got a marshmellow-like feeling but its a bit more condensed. You can just take a big handful, put it in your mouth, swallow it, and it just sort of slides down your throat. The fufu doesn't really have a taste, but the soup it's in is so full of hot, delicious, salty, peanuty flavor. And the tuna was just yum. And the whole thing was only 8,000 cedis (about 80 cents) and I couldn't even finish the fufu. Like I said, it was pretty amazing. I think I'll be having a lot of it over the semester.