Radio Silence Explained

Sorry for the radio silence.  Today is Monday and I have been silent for several days.  We have been providing a massive professional development, traveling to the Cape Coast to be tourists for a day, and visiting more schools. I am going to try to recap these experiences in a blog post or two, because they were pretty spectacular.  Hopefully I can get caught up!

Saturday was a big day!  Over 100 teachers from low-cost sustainable schools arrived at our hotel to receive professional development.  They were lined up out the door!

We had several objectives for this day:  1) we wanted to model engaging classroom management techniques 2) we wanted to inspire relationship building between teachers and children and 3) we wanted to teach inquiry-based teaching methods to these teachers who have grown up in and are practicing more didactic techniques.

Dr. Spencer, our professor, began the day with a session around classroom management.  We have observed that in many Ghanaian classrooms, student responses are not freeform, but rather are recitations of information that has been presented.  It was fascinating to see them respond to the following quote,

“The mere imparting of information is not education.  Above all things the effort must result in

making a man think and do for himself.”  

Dr. Carter G. Woodson

Nicholas, one of our favorite resident educators, talked about how we should not give students information

but allow them to make discoveries and become self-sufficient.   It was inspiring to see many of the young

Ghanaian teachers listening to Nicholas and nodding their heads in agreement.  We believe that Nicholas is an

example of an untapped resource for educators here in Ghana. 

Nicholas explains how he teaches students to "think and do" for themselves.

The session also modeled assertive discipline, the writing of respectful and clear discipline plans with carefully constructed rules, policies and procedures.  We modeled popular methods such as "Think, Pair, Share," "Shout Outs" and "Gallery Walks".  Our goal was to show the teachers through our own methods that having students move, think, respond and work collaboratively will enhance learning. 

The remainder of our day was spent in break-out sessions.  I taught 5 sessions about Language Arts focusing on questioning and cooperative groups around reading.  During these sessions, I had an "A-Ha" moment-- it is clear that while English may be the national language, the teachers have highest proficiency in their local languages.  This really changed my perspective about how we should be instructing teachers around reading comprehension.  I was really excited to share some of the methods I remember learning as a young teacher--things like building a print-rich environment with environmental text, how to read aloud to students and engage them with the book through questioning, QAR model of questioning and Literature Circles.  It was also fun to model classroom management with them.  I had to keep reminding myself that these teachers were just out of secondary school.  Some had only been teaching for 2 months!  Even with their short tenure, the teachers were very responsive and seemed excited about what they were learning.  They even showed me some Azunto (Ghanaian dance) moves!

At the end of a long day, Dr. Spencer awards certificates.

After the day was complete, Dr. Spencer awarded each student with a certificate from the University of San Diego.  The teachers were very excited and kept asking when we would meet up with them again and provide more training.  I can't count how many asked for my email address or wanted to become Facebook friends.  I believe I will return to Ghana and see these friends again.

It is very late here, but tomorrow I will share our beautiful and relaxing day at Elmina on the Cape Coast and our final school visit.  Believe it or not, I only have two more days in Ghana!