I'm here to HELP ! !

Well I’m sat in the Teacher Resource Centre on another very slow afternoon in Nadowli. (Most of you are probably celebrating the Diamond Jubilee) I have advertised on posters at the GES office and at every workshop or Heads meeting I have attended that I will be in the TRC every afternoon from 2 – 4pm to help make TLM’s (Teaching and Learning Materials), assist with computer skills, introduce teachers to the use of phonics in the classroom and any general help required, until I leave Ghana. In the entire time that I have turned up each day, not one person has been in to visit and ask for any help, ever the optimist; I still turn up each afternoon hoping that one day someone will indeed turn up and ask for my help !! My kindle is proving to be the best present I have ever received to date. I’m managing on average 3 books a fortnight, which for me is unheard of.

Keeping busy is proving difficult as the IDEA of having someone to come into school to help is brilliant, but the REALITY is actually not really welcomed. I think most Head teachers and their staff want you to come in and do things for them but they don’t actually want to take your ideas on board and make any changes as invariably this means extra work for them. They don’t see the big picture for the long term, actually what I suggest will actually in the long run make their teaching easier.

I have been into three schools and assigned a day to each to go in and help them anyway I can. Tuesday in a Primary, Wednesday in a JHS and Thursday in a KG. So far I have done an ICT training for the Primary and sat in on a two hour phonics lesson in the KG and not managed to get my foot in the door at the JHS as there is always an excuse as to way I can’t stay when I arrive. The JHS has been given 24 netbooks, (laptops) which have not been used since they were received nearly five months ago, I was hoping to get into school and get them started with using them. Last week was sports week and a team from each school represented their school in a circuit competition, this meant that not only were the 6 or so in the team out of school but lessons were cancelled for everyone all week.

After chatting to a friend and fellow volunteer in the next district, where staff tend to be more open to support, she has offered for me to join her with some of her work, helping with ICT workshops, visits to schools etc until I finish up my placement when the schools close for summer. Hopefully this will be good experience that I can take with me when I leave Ghana and return home.

PS. If you read my blog can you leave a comment or a ‘Hi’ as blogger is not recording when people visit so it looks like no-one is visiting my blog L