The End of Our Teaching

Today I found myself embroiled in a battle of the wills with a group of 35 maths teachers. Why anyone out me in front of a group of maths teachers is beyond me, but I delivered a session on Inclusion and Differentiation which involved rudimentary stick figure drawings and an extend Support: Challenge: Develop debate about the way to stop AIDS from spreading across Africa. 

My class humoured me before asking a series of progressively more challenging questions ending in: 'do you use the cane?' After swerving my way around positive behavior strategies I use instead, I was then given a round of applause. I cannot imagine getting a round of applause for doing a training session at home and I cannot imagine that a group of teachers forced to come in on their summer holidays in England would be anything except openly hostile.

And still, the teachers come in smiling, grateful to be in our sessions and open to listening and considering a series of provocative challenges that threaten to change the well-established environment in their classrooms. Challenges, that when imposed in England, caused widespread anger and debate. You want us to talk less? You want us to create completely independent learners? You want us to give up control? The teachers here might think we're crazy, but they handle it with true professionalism. They critique and ask questions, but that makes me think they might try some of the ideas. 

This will be difficult for teachers in a system where rote learning seems to be the government's educational policy at the moment. A more child centered approach was implemented in Accra three years ago, but it's yet to trickle this rural direction. Thus, students' books are filled with paragraphs copied from the board, exercises in recall and quizzes arbitrarily marked out of 5/10/20 depending on the day. This means students can tell you what iambic pentameter, similes and personification are, but they can't tell you why the writer uses them or what inferences we can make about the characters being written about.  

Change is in the cards though and the teachers are up for anything.  

I think some of this positivity comes down to the Agona Educational Team consisting of Mina, Mary and Reverend John who put on a rather long-winded but ceremonial opening event hosted in the presbyterian church just off campus.  We all attended on Monday morning and were reminded that: 1. we were on British time, not Ghanaian Time (more to our African colleagues); 2. We all needed to open our hearts and minds to progress: 3. We were on British time, not Ghanaian Time. So important it was mentioned twice.  

The team of administrators were a force to be reckoned with.  On a daily basis, Mina called non-attenders demanding to know where they were.  She also ensured our facilities were well-kept and our drink, snack preferences were to our liking.  She wandered, greeted, buzzed around to ensure the teachers were making the most of their sessions.  Mina need not worry; they were.  

In the end, it did feel like we made a bit of impact.  Closing evaluations revealed that this was the first Professional Development event many of the teachers had attended.  Unlike the teachers in Accra, they had limited access to training and INSET.  Our closing evaluations also revealed statements like: 'This was awesome', 'God Bless You' and 'We are truly grateful'.  

It's hard not to feel warm and fuzzy with feedback like that.