Leaving on a Jet Plane

Tomorrow is D (departure) day and I have pretty much packed my bag and am ready to hit the road.

I thought I would describe a tiny bit more about the trip before leaving. 

This trip has a two-fold purpose.  Our team will be going into subsidized private schools that have a low-fee structure and working with teachers to provide training about using more inquiry-based and critical thinking based methods.  Education in Ghana is based on the traditional British system of education.  This translation of the British system of education seems to support very traditional and didactic methods.  While much research (contact me--I've got the citations!) indicates that students learn more meaningfully when they are provided with inquiry-based lessons that require students to use higher-order thinking skills, we have been told to expect that many teachers may not be familiar with structuring lessons in this way.   Once we hit the ground we will be working with teachers to understand how they do teach and working with them to develop lessons that use this type of model.   We will also be gathering information for our own research about inquiry-based methods, professional development and training of teachers in Ghana.

For the 13 days we will be on the ground, all but one will be spent working closely in at least 5 schools and with more than 100 teachers.  We have done a lot of preparation of materials, but we will also doing needs assessment and be responding on the ground!  Flexibility is going to be KEY!

For today, I am exercising my flexibility by culling down my packing and preparing my suitcase to be as light as possible, while still carrying 3 x a day protein bars and multivitamins!  I wish you all a fond farewell as I finish these preparations and can't wait to report live from Accra on Sunday!  The weather is a balmy 90 degrees and I am ready to hit the equator!