Tonight I feel pulled in two directions. I am eager for to get back to Chicago; I miss my family and my space, my garden and the smell outside the library down the street. I miss home. At the same time, I am not ready to leave Ghana, and our departure is looming. It’s difficult to feel both of these at the same time. Conflicted.
Yesterday, before we left for Volta and were waiting at the compound, Jackline (I’ve finally got her spelling right) was filling a bucket at the water tank and she said good morning with a nearly coquettish shyness – I knew she was ready to give me a hug and it felt so good. I hoped, if I was lucky, to set the foundation for one real relationship while I was here, but it has been so much more than that - Jackline, Mac, Fausty, Charles, Grace, Portia, Anita, Belinda. Something is happening and now seems like the wrong time to leave.
Jackline
Monday. Today was a strange and sort of dark day. Moods were low at school and they should have been up – we’re finishing projects, graduation is coming, tomorrow is the Parliament trip. But kids, teachers, all of us we were in a bit of a funk. I think that’s part of why now seems too soon to leave. We’re all just getting to know one another, to trust each other really, beyond the surface; we could have a dark day and make it to the end and still accomplish so much and learn and work hard and struggle through. The real work.
At the end of the day, Belinda asked me to talk with Portia, a student in Form 1 (JHS 1 or Parker’s 6th Grade). Belinda brought her over and said with a warm smile, “she doesn’t like math.” She wanted me to “have a talk” with Portia, and as it turned out, Anita and Grace. Belinda later told me that when she asks the girls what they are struggling with, they say “nothing Madam” and refuse to express what’s hard. She thought maybe they would open up to me. I am flattered beyond belief and while I wouldn’t say that any one of them particularly opened themselves up too much, each girl described something I could understand about them as math students, something to work from and strategize from to best support their growth as mathematicians. Doctors and journalists. That’s what they want to be.
Grace is an amazing math student; she’s so verbal and expressive I had to give her the theoretical mouth zipper during class today. She has deep ebony skin and wide eyes that she closes when she tilts her head back to think about what she’s describing in a math scenario. Like she’s picturing the numbers behind those closed eyes. Interestingly enough, she tests badly – 27% on an exam this spring. These tests determine what grade level she’ll move to next year – if she tests in this range again, she’ll be forced to repeat Form 1 and this would be terrible loss for her classmates and most importantly to Grace’s confidence and growth as an academic. I think she has a written language processing issue. As she described herself, “I understand but I can’t write down what I’m thinking.” It’s like her had can’t keep up with her mind and she makes mistakes because she starts manipulating numbers again before she’s noted her initial process or work. This happened today, prior to meeting this afternoon and I was able to use that example, and in particular how she was able to reflect back on her work and identify where the error occurred and why (excellent!).
For Anita and Portia, they’re both strong math students – they have good strategies and ideas, but there are gaps in their foundational understanding of certain concepts – almost like gaps in number sense that need to be filled in. So that’s the plan. They are going to meet together and with a set of problems work on making stronger their core understanding of some of the more basic concepts. They agreed (separately) that it was their job to get the work done and to ask questions – of themselves and their teacher. Belinda and I agreed that our job was to make sure we were available (and my capacity here is limited but not impossible) to answer their questions and guide them forward with a solid base. It was important, I think, that both sides identify what we would do to get moving.
These girls show such amazing mathematical capacity. The world today, while better than in previous generations, doesn’t particularly encourage girls in the broader areas of math and sciences. I know that is a sweeping generalization and I don’t mean every person in the world is hell-bent on keeping girls down….but it’s there – math is “not an area of strength” for girls and they buy into this, often by saying “I’m more of a reader” or “I’m a writer, I don’t do math.” As if there is something mutually exclusive going on. But I digress….
Belinda and I are trading email addresses and I have promised the girls I will check in regularly and send them problem solving questions in the year ahead. It’s thrilling, really really thrilling, to be a part of this. I can’t tell you all what it means but maybe the above gives you a hint at it.
Mac. Saturday Mac asked me about the US. He’s the first student to really ask me direct questions about where I live. He asked me, very quietly while he, Jackline and I were sanding a bookcase, “Madam Kate, in your country do the teachers have the cane?” It took me a minute to figure out what he meant, “Do you mean, do teachers use the cane on students in America?” He nodded. This is hard because in Ghana, the cane is common, a part of the culture. Later, Joey told me that corporal punishment was a part of his grammar school experience, so it’s important to remember that it was not all that long ago that this was banned in the US. I told Mac that in the US there were laws to prevent teachers from hurting a child. He nodded and didn’t ask me any more about it.
Mac
Then he asked me about a character named Helicopter Reporter. He told me a long story about him. He had super powers but his parents were killed when he was very young. The bad guys, who had killed his parents, were trying to kill him. Some mean people and some nice people were letting him stay with them and he was going to school to learn how to use his super powers. Mac then explained to me, with some graphic accuracy, how the boy’s powers originated from his face. Mac used lots of hand gestures and pantomimed stretching to get the point across. He asked me did we have any shows like that in the US. I was thinking….Helicopter Reporter? Nothing familiar about that…..Hm…but yes, there’s that movie about the kid with super powers who goes to super power school but his powers aren’t activated….I watched it with my nieces, I swear this wasn’t a movie I chose to watch. Anyway, I answer, “Yeah, we have something similar. Super Hero High or something like that.” Jackline looks at us over the edge of the book case and says. “It’s a scab on his head, like this.” She made a jagged line on her forehead and my very own lighting bolt smacked me on the head. “Harry Potter?” Mac looked at me with this very clear expression that read, Duh, but what he actually said was, “Yes, Helicopter Reporter.”
Back to this morning henceforth referred to as, Difficult Monday….when I stopped by to check in with Mac’s class they were pretty rowdy. There are no subs for the school so if a teacher is gone for any reason, the other teachers step in to help out. Today, two teachers were out so the all of the teachers were helping fill in for two classes. Class 3 was sans teacher supervision for a while before I got in there. When I first arrived, they were working on “Morals and Religion” and were answering questions about tribes, chiefs, neighborhoods and neighbors. I am hopeful that I get to hear the rest of the lesson. I asked them to explain what a chief and what a tribe were. Then I asked them to compare a chief and a president. We talked about elections and how one becomes president versus chief and how one becomes chief. Many felt that the chief was more powerful than a president because when you go in to see a chief you have to take off your shoes and kneel down in front of him, but you don’t have to do that with the president. Another contingency felt that a president was more powerful because he was head of everybody and the chief was only head of some people. They asked me, “Do you have a chief?” I explained that I had alderman and a mayor and governor and senators. But no chief. Mac said, “What about your religious leader? Do you have one of those?” I told them no and Mac frowned and looked quite concerned on my behalf. At lunch Greenie, Joey and I all laughed and agreed I should have answered, “Yes, Rush Limbaugh.” Ugh!
Two hours later when I returned to Class 3 for math they were utterly out of control. Typical wound-up 8-11 years olds bouncing off the walls, bossing each other, pushing one another, yelling, correcting, swatting. It was…perfectly typical student behavior. What happened to the angels that stood up when I walked into the room and called out, “Good afternoon Madam Kate, you are welcome”?
After about thirty minutes of passing out notebooks, more swatting, correcting each other and calling out I was pretty much at the end of my tether. On Friday we had planned to split into groups to work on problem solving cards and then they would teach one another their strategies, but time was ticking by so we were out of time. We had a serious talk about it and I laid down the ground rules: no hitting, no yelling, so bossing, no calling out answers….on and on. NoNoNo. Not exactly the tone I was going for. Ugh again. Anyway, it’s noisy, they’re all telling one another to be quiet and Mac looks up at me with his round eyes and open-car-door ears and says with utmost sincerity, “Madam Kate, should I show you the cane?” I did a double take and said, “What! No, Mac, I don’t want you to show me the cane. I want you and every one else in this room to sit down and stop talking!” I had that internal laugh-cringe moment and we moved on. One by one they said, “We can do it Madam. We are ready. You can trust us. We are ready.” It is an irresistible sound that and I am glad of it.
Turns out we had another hour so we got to do some “crossing the mid-line” exercises and yoga poses to start, finished six math cards and ended with three groups sharing their strategies. An excellent, excellent end.
So you can see what I mean, perhaps, about the conflict. There are reasons to go home and a seemingly endless list of reasons to stay and each one of those reasons has a face and a story, a life and a desire to learn to go with it. I understand Greenie’s joy here now. I understand what it means to fall in love with this place. And right now, with just a few days to go, I understand the dread of the long distance lover, preparing to go home.
