Ghana - Saturday: Kate's reflections on Friday

It’s a little earlier (6:09am) than I’d like to be awake on a Saturday morning, but a rooster is serenading the hotel which is sort of pastoral and charming the first ten or twelve cockadoodledoos but ten minutes in….well, I’m awake now.

About the chickens – they are everywhere! On the road to school, at school, in every yard, on the streets in Accra. Everywhere you turn - chickens. The eggs here are different – they are all white. The first morning I had a boiled egg and when I cut it open the only difference between the yolk and the white was texture- the color was the same rendering the distinction of “white” v “yolk” moot. We’ve been pondering why the yolks are white – I’m leaning towards iron deficiency although that isn’t based on any solid medical knowledge. Maybe some one from home can explain that.

Enough about the chickens and their eggs. I wanted to write a little more about yesterday; we were all pretty tired at the end of the day and anticipating the Ghana/Uruguay game so our blogs were a bit anemic as well.

My first class yesterday wasn’t until 10:35 so Greenie, Charles, Joey and I spent some time talking about the water filtration system the school needs. There are no pipes laid in the area where the school is built. In fact, in much of Ghana there are no water pipes and those that have been laid are asbestos pipes that need to be removed and replaced with PVC, so entire communities are without running water. This is true in Medina where Tuskegee is built. This means that water has to be brought up from wells are purchased. The school has a well that uses a pump to draw water and fill this big tank you see below.

This water is used for washing hands, cleaning, etc but it is not potable. Charles had the water tested at the Standard Board, a governing agency that tests and regulates water quality, and it contains all of the necessary minerals or drinking water and has a relatively low salt content (this is a problem at the lower elevations closer to Accra where proximity to the coast causes high levels of salt in the ground water) but it needs to be purified via UV rays and filtration. Since the water can’t be consumed, the school pays to bring water in; this is a bag of 30 sachets of water.

A sachet is about two cups of water and is a sealed plastic bag. The purification machine cleans the water and then bags and seals it in these. Empties of these sachets are EVERYWHERE! Still, compared with the bulk of our water bottles and subsequent waste at home, they theoretically have less of an environmentally damaging impact. Besides which, the water at home is potable.

At 10:35 I returned to Class 2 to continue addition with three digit numbers. I started by reading eight three-digit numbers and then had the students choose two to add together. Theopholis and I talked about this; I told him I set it up this way so I could see which two numbers the students chose. You can get a good sense of confidence level by looking at what they choose: 213 + 142 may feel more comfortable to a student still developing their understanding of how it functions than 987 + 798 which requires repeated “carrying.” Next I asked them to choose two that looked challenging and to try adding those. When I looked them over yesterday afternoon they had all chosen more difficult problems and solved them with accuracy.

Then we worked with base-10 blocks, starting with a given amount and a sum, they had to use the blocks to determine the missing addend. This sort of “inverted” work was challenging, but the class was small do to early morning rains so between the two of us Theopholis and I managed to get in time with each pair of students.

A word on gender balance….In Theopholis class there are 21 students: 19 girls and 2 boys. Up until a few months ago there was only one boy (Charles has rolling admissions now at all grade levels). This imbalance is an extreme for the school but overall the girls outnumber the boys in most grade levels. It’s not clear to me yet where the younger boys are; they may well be home assisting a parent. More on that another day.

The chalkboards are plywood that get painted at the beginning of each year; you can tell it's near the end of the year because the board paint is worn thin - lots of work has happened here!

Class 3 was ready for action when I joined them at 11:30. I wrote this problem on the board:

There are 8 toffees in each bag. Each bag of toffees coast 60 pesewas.* How much will 32 toffees cost?

*a pesewa is akin to a US cent; 100 pesewas = 1 cedi. But, the 10 pesewa coin is bigger than the 5 pesewa piece.

Before we started or even read the problem, I had the students practice there 4, 8 and 10 multiplication facts to x12. They had them pretty well down but like all students learning their facts, they tend to get stuck in the pattern of recitation rather than listening to the question being called, so when I would mix in a factor pair in the 8s out of order, they would call whatever would have been sequentially next. Pretty standard 3^rd/4^th grade math fact issue.

I read the problem aloud, had a student read it aloud. We talked about the key elements of the problem and discussed what was being asked. Then I had them work in groups to solve. One group did 32 + 32 eight times. Repeated addition. I asked them why they had started there and they told me it was because they wanted to know how many. I asked how many what and they looked at each other and were just absolutely, fabulously unsure. We read the problem again and they puzzled it out and realized, “we need to find how much.” Then they added 60 pesewas eight times. I asked how many toffees they would have if they paid 60 pesewas x 8 and I could see the connection happening. They got to a formula of sorts: 1 Bag = 8 Toffees = 60 pesewas. So, 2 Bags = 16 toffees = 120 pesewas (or, as the students describe that value, “one cedi and twenty pesewas.”) Once they had it down they explained it to the class. This is a new for them and they tend to talk to the board rather than the class. They started arguing with each other about how to explain it and how they got their answer and then the kids in their desks started demanding clearer instruction. It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud – the whole thing was so…familiar. Watching kids learning, struggling, making it work – universals.

We were all cracking up by the end of this lesson.

Class 1 and back to time. Thanks to Greenie's advice and feedback I was able to focus my lesson on the 15 minute intervals on the clock and we worked through time on the 15, 30 and 45 minute marks. Abigail, a very hesitant student, raised her hands a few times today, which was great to see. I wonder if it was because the class was half the size (down to 14 rather than the usual 28) due to the rains.

I am deeply moved by the trust and welcome I'm experiencing in all of the classrooms, from teachers and students. I cannot emphasize this enough and hope these posts are making clear what it means to work with this community of learners.

A word or two (you know it’ll be more) on class structures. In Ghana, students take a test at the end of the year to determine which grade level they will be going to for the next academic year. This means that if you don’t do well on the test, you remain in the same class. There is no age restriction or requirement, so in a given class you can have students in age ranges from 5-12. It’s particularly notable in the 5^th/6^th class where there is a boy who looks like he’s about 8 years old in a class with students ages 11-14. He’s lost at sea as far as his social/emotional world/experience goes. And yet, there are students who were held back a year or two and because of that had a chance to build their core understandings and are now graduating or leading their classes. I am conflicted about this but I can understand and see, given the requirements of the school system, how Tuskegee has done the best job possible following protocol and making it work.

Joey and his team made huge progress in their work today and I’ll let him fill you in on all of those details but I wanted to share one more bit about yesterday…. As we were getting to leave for the hotel, Charles was standing in one of the newly tiled rooms, looking at the chalkboard Joey and his students made, and he said, “A great achievement. This is a great achievement.” I wish you all could hear Charles’ voice; the way he said it, deep and quiet and with a smile somewhat hidden inside it. A really good end of school day.

Greenie took these two pictures right before the above conversation. We're calling the series: Goat at Rest, Teacher at Rest

Ps from Joey: Saturday morning- depressing mood in the air. Uraguay won the game last night with the game going into overtime and then a sudden death penalty shootout. In the last seconds of overtime Ghana should have won- they made a goal but a Uruguay player used his hands to block a goal (the ball did cross the goal line but the ref didn’t call it a goal) so sadL All of Africa is calm and down- we can feel the shock and disappointment in the overcast grey morning air.