The madness of college life!

Written on Saturday 11th October

Hello one and all!

Once again – thank you to everyone for all your wonderful e-mails – I really love hearing about how all is going at home!

Right, well having moaned about the pace of life being really slow in my last blog, the past week has been the TOTAL OPPOSITE! Monday started at 6am with a run (YES – I’m running in Africa, but only at ridiculous hours in the morning!) and then orientation from 8am-2pm followed by a quick bit of collapsing and then the weekly staff meeting at 4pm followed by assembly (a repeat of the staff meeting for the students…) at 5pm with the students until 6:30pm. That however wasn’t the end of the day – oh no! At 8:20pm my boss then presented me with my timetable – my first lesson being at 7am the NEXT day… In fairness I shouldn’t have been so surprised, I knew classes started on Monday/Tuesday and I had started to prepare but not having a timetable I’d sort of ‘forgotten’ if that makes any sort of sense. Anyway, so I then had to finish planning my first lessons before heading to bed, where I didn’t sleep too well...

So Tuesday arrived and I had to go and find where my class actually was - hadn’t got a clue! Managed to find it and I then spent the day teaching and learning – BIG STYLE… The way the classes work the students are in class from 7:00-9:00 and then we break for breakfast, then 9:35-11:40 another short break and then 11:55-2:00 and as it was I taught all three sessions… In honesty I found it difficult; but then I guess it was always going to be – I’m teaching adults how to be teachers – not exactly what I’m used to. However, I have already learnt a lot! I know that the session I taught on Thursday was far better than those on Tuesday… And bonus – I have Fridays off! Well I don’t have any classes so I can prepare for the next week which is what I did this week. I only teach 3 classes for 4 hours a week each so there isn’t a huge amount of planning, but it’s taking me a while to do at the moment just because it’s all new. I am also planning on teaching a couple of hours at the Junior Secondary School (JSS) whilst I’m here so that I don’t forget how to teach children and to ensure I actually know the Ghanaian curriculum! (It will also be very interesting to teach slightly older children.) We’re going to meet the Principal – Madame Lilly (ooh yes – my students call me Madame - Madame Samanta!) this coming week to sort that out.

Another aspect of my job is to help run a program called Bright Stars, which is for children who are behind in their learning because they can’t always attend class as they have to work... We did our initial assessments of the children on Wednesday and my goodness – I was shocked at their current level of ability… 10 year old children who didn’t have a clue how to add 6 and 7 together… it was a real eye opener. Anyway there are 4 of us who will run that on a Wednesday and Thursday afternoon from 3:30-5:00. We’re also working on getting the students at the college involved so that it could actually be run without us – ‘sustainable development’ and all that jazz. Really looking forward to getting started; it’ll certainly be a challenge!

Anyway, so that has basically been my week – busy and a huge learning curve. But I think I’m going to enjoy it once I get the hang of teaching adults, (a lot of whom are older than me!) I feel pretty confident about the lessons I’ve planned for this week. I also feel really lucky with all the people I have here with me, it’s a really supportive bunch and I know I’m going to enjoy both working and socialising with them!

Right, time to go (and socialise – in Ghana (or our college anyway) you don’t go out ‘for a drink’, it’s called a one-one, or a two-two, three-three… dependent on how many drinks you have!)

Much love to all, Sam xxx