Experience -> Study Abroad -> Teaching
After School
While in Ghana, I helped create an organized after school program to help students learn to read, write, and do basic arithmetic. We grouped the students so that they could help each other learn basic reading and math skills.
Students would come after school to the basement of the house I stayed at. They'd find their tables (red, orange, yellow, or green), and begin lessons. The lessons were co-taught by one or two volunteers supporting one of the scholars of the house. The scholars are the ones responsible for most of the activities and helping students translate Twi to English. The volunteers are just there for support and to help guide students to stay on task.
While in Ghana, I helped create an organized after school program to help students learn to read, write, and do basic arithmetic. We grouped the students so that they could help each other learn basic reading and math skills.
Students would come after school to the basement of the house I stayed at. They'd find their tables (red, orange, yellow, or green), and begin lessons. The lessons were co-taught by one or two volunteers supporting one of the scholars of the house. The scholars are the ones responsible for most of the activities and helping students translate Twi to English. The volunteers are just there for support and to help guide students to stay on task.
Sequence
- We started with basic letter sounds. Twi is a phonetic alphabet, so knowing the letter names is the same as knowing the letter sounds. English is not. The biggest confusion seemed to come from whether we were saying the letter or the sound when we told them two different 'names' for each letter. The vowels had three!
- Then, students started to learn to combine letter sounds. We used a lot of rhyming songs and Dr. Seuss-type books with this step. Once students were beginning to get most of the combinations of letters, we introduced some of the dipthongs that don't follow 'normal' sound structures, such as 'th', 'sh', 'gh', 'ing', and so forth.
- After students seemed confident on being able to identify the sounds of multiple letters together, we worked on putting whole words together. We started with rhyming words, putting our own Dr. Seuss - esque sentences together, based on things the students had seen and experienced. Some examples groups came up with are: "Goats do not go on boats" and "Would you like a dish of fish?" Once students felt confident they could put their own sentences together, they moved into the next phase - trying to read full books on their own.
- Here, students read books varying from Kindergarten to 4th grade reading levels. We paired them one-on-one with a volunteer or scholar from the house, and worked with them on reading aloud and understanding what they're reading. Most of the books we had available were books volunteers had brought from the USA, which meant a lot of them were not culturally relevant to the students we were working with. One of the things scholars were working on when I left was re-writing the stories with more culturally relevant materials in them, such as palm trees instead of pine trees. Each students who was reading aloud in this one-on-one stage worked on one piece at a time, such as differentiating 'f' and 'v', or 'd' and 'th'. Once they understood and heard the difference between the sounds they struggled with, we moved on to another difficult sound as they continued to read books.
In School
While in Busua, I taught in KG-1 (Kindergarten 1 class) in the local school, while the teacher was on break. The school was about a 3 minute walk from the house I was staying at. I usually taught Monday-Thursday, and some of the Fridays, but I tried to spend Fridays planning for after school activities and to get to know the scholars. Above is what the school looked like from the outside. Below is a group of my students in a classroom. Usually, the adults in Ghana didn't like it when I took pictures. The kids loved them, so they convinced the adults it was okay for the volunteers to take a few pictures. We spent the mornings learning reading skills, mainly letters and common groups of letters; then we spent the afternoons learning math or, sometimes, science. Since I didn't know enough about Ghanaian geography, politics, etc., I did not attempt to teach any sort of social studies.
While in Busua, I taught in KG-1 (Kindergarten 1 class) in the local school, while the teacher was on break. The school was about a 3 minute walk from the house I was staying at. I usually taught Monday-Thursday, and some of the Fridays, but I tried to spend Fridays planning for after school activities and to get to know the scholars. Above is what the school looked like from the outside. Below is a group of my students in a classroom. Usually, the adults in Ghana didn't like it when I took pictures. The kids loved them, so they convinced the adults it was okay for the volunteers to take a few pictures. We spent the mornings learning reading skills, mainly letters and common groups of letters; then we spent the afternoons learning math or, sometimes, science. Since I didn't know enough about Ghanaian geography, politics, etc., I did not attempt to teach any sort of social studies.
Difficulties
In the school I taught at, students were expected to buy their own uniform and materials. However, we were in the middle of a rural village where there really was not much, if any, money in 98% of the families. Therefore, students often wore ill-fitting uniforms, if they wore them at all. I never once saw a student with the workbook they were supposed to have. (The one in the picture above is from the library in the house I was staying at). Often, we had just one small piece of chalk, with no eraser. Most of the rooms had one or two posters, but they were old, faded, ripped, or out of date. Students sat three or four to a bench in many classrooms, and a high number of them weren't in school more than two or three days of the week. Everyone had more important things to do, like help their families in the fields. Even with all of this, the students loved coming to school. In part, it was because they got to see a white face, which was new to a lot of them. But, overall, these students recognized the value in education, even if they didn't always know how to access it.
In the school I taught at, students were expected to buy their own uniform and materials. However, we were in the middle of a rural village where there really was not much, if any, money in 98% of the families. Therefore, students often wore ill-fitting uniforms, if they wore them at all. I never once saw a student with the workbook they were supposed to have. (The one in the picture above is from the library in the house I was staying at). Often, we had just one small piece of chalk, with no eraser. Most of the rooms had one or two posters, but they were old, faded, ripped, or out of date. Students sat three or four to a bench in many classrooms, and a high number of them weren't in school more than two or three days of the week. Everyone had more important things to do, like help their families in the fields. Even with all of this, the students loved coming to school. In part, it was because they got to see a white face, which was new to a lot of them. But, overall, these students recognized the value in education, even if they didn't always know how to access it.