Imagination Station

One thing I realize I haven't written anything about is the school I "teach" at on Wednesdays and my experiences there.

A little over a month my roommate, Claire, took on an internship with a micro-finance organization called Chapter 58. Her job for the duration of her stay includes volunteer management for their "after-school" program. When she asked me if I would like to be involved I responded with an enthusiastic yes. My yes was even more enthusiastic after I found out it would only require 1 hour of my time each week. I asked her what I would be doing and her response was simply "What would you like to do?"

The after school program is more-or-less the placement of random volunteers in a random school teaching a random class at a kind-of after-school program.

I had no idea what to teach. I quickly narrowed the field down to yoga, arts and crafts, or creative writing. Once I realized that yoga was entirely ridiculous and I didn't have the supplies for arts and crafts (construction paper and crayons are expensive and hard to find here) I concluded that creative writing was the way to go.

The week after I signed on to help, Claire told me she would take me to see the school where I would be teaching. She warned me that it was not a government-affiliated school and that we would be walking past a lot of trash to get there. I figured it would look a lot like the rest of the Okponglo area, where it was located. When we finished our trek up the much-longer-than-it-seemed hill to the school I thought to myself "wow, this is a pretty nice school, it's huge!"

However, the school I saw, and was fairly impressed by, was not the school where I would be teaching. My school is BEHIND the big Bawaleshi school I was looking at that day. To get to it you have to go behind the Bawaleshi school and through a trash-dump.

I laughed a little but also felt a great deal of disappointment and sadness as I stepped carefully over bottles, animal feces, water bags and discarded clothing. This is what the kids walk through to get to school every day... and this is what they see from the clearing where they play futbol each day.

When we entered the school house I was introduced to the headmaster, Mr. Isaac. I told him my name, my course of study (what I'm "reading" as they say in Ghana) and what I planned to teach. He told me that creative writing sounded great and pointed me in the direction of my class.

Wait... my class? As in, I'm teaching today? Oh crap.

I headed to the black board that was actually ply wood I was allowed to write on with chalk, and introduced myself to the class. They were incredibly quiet at first and I had a hard time trying to figure out if they were afraid of me or already bored by my presence.

In my first class I wanted to figure out what we would be able to do as a class. Where were they in terms of their reading and writing skills? Had they done anything creative in class already that day? I got my answers fairly quickly. Creativity is not in the lesson plan at my school and my students are not at a point where they can do much with writing other than copying down what I write.

Well then, that requires a change of game plan and essentially a change of class.

Creative writing quickly became "The Imagination Station."

The new goal: give these kids a chance to laugh, express themselves, and tell stories... you know... be kids. Easy right?

Wrong.

The first class was more than rough around the edges while I tried to talk to them about characters and realized they had no idea what a character was. Mr. Isaac was trying his best to assist me but was essentially repeating everything I said... word for word - in English. This was not helping me. I was racking my brain trying to find a better way to explain the concept of a character to kids. I thought AHA! examples! Examples always work best when explaining something new. And yet again I met a road block. I realized I had no clue who the characters in their everyday lives were. I couldn't reference Disney movies, Nickelodeon or Harry Potter here. So, I did what any eldest of 4 would do in my situation: I decided to draw a picture, make a fool of myself and hopefully escape my first hour of teaching with some laughter in hand.

I drew a lion on the board and explained that the lion was going to be our example of a character. He was going to be the character in my story about my experience at the tro-tro station that day. In the story, Richmond the lion (named by one of the students after himself) was chasing me to the tro-tro station where I couldn't get a tro-tro because I'm a silly, confused Oburoni and I was trying to go the wrong way. I impersonated the tro-tro mates laughing at me and making simple jokes in Twi. This worked and finally I got them to loosen up and have a good laugh at my expense.

I left after an hour of fumbling and felt on fire to go back and try again next week. I had given them an assignment to try and make up a story about our friend Richmond the lion, and told them I would take volunteers to tell their stories the following week .

A week later I walked in and had a different teacher at the school assisting me. His name is Dominic and he has become someone I enjoy working with each week. He seems to genuinely like the kids although he intensely dislikes teaching.

In Ghana there are only so many jobs available and school is expensive, so often times young people like Dominic end up in positions that they don't actually like at all, that they never planned to do. This happens even more because of the National Service required of Ghanaians. The National Service essentially assigns you to go wherever they deem fit in Ghana and do whatever they tell you for one year, to serve the country.

When it came time for the kids to come up and tell their stories I was grossly disappointed when my invitation was met with crickets... reason #57 I can't be a teacher... the cricket response REALLY stinks.

I finally coerced one of the boys to come up and tell a story, but just after I won that battle I was confronted with another enemy: noise. I teach in a one room school-house that has 4 classes going on simultaneously. When a scared 8 year old is up in front of a class trying to tell a story he doesn't want to tell... noise is a problem. And background noise from the other classes wasn't our only problem. Most of our class of 20 wasn't paying attention. I asked the little boy to pause for a second and I told the class they needed to quiet down and listen. I used my stern Mom-voice (or what Frog Camp folks call my Carrie Zimmerman voice) and thought it was fairly effective. Apparently Dominic didn't think it was effective enough...

"If you don't shut your mouths I am going to cane you in front of the class." And then he got out the switch that was propped against the wall.

I had no idea what to do with myself. I was entirely disturbed by the idea of a kid getting hit because I had shown frustration and also completely aware that Dominic was doing what was in all likelihood normal in this school. This came with the realization that I am a volunteer who will be here for less than 4 months, one hour a week... I don't have the right to tell him how to do their job or attempt to dissuade teachers in this school from using a tool that is both common and in their minds "effective."

I told Dominic it wasn't necessary and asked the kids to please listen up and come back next week with stories to share. I also promised that I would bring a prize for whoever was brave enough to volunteer (I am not above bribing my students to participate.)

It broke my heart walking away from the school just thinking about how pointless it was to encourage kids to use their imaginations and have fun when they were being threatened with a beating if they DIDN'T do it. Basically saying "have fun, because if you don't you are going to get the switch or a good caning."

I felt overwhelmed and powerless.

The next week I had a talk with Dominic and things got better. The switch was put away and the threats of caning stopped. I may not be able to change the way the school works but I can control what happens in that hour that the kids are with me.

The bribes worked and I have more volunteers to tell stories than I can accommodate. I can't imagine any kid in the United States being so excited about a pencil.

Most of the stories my kids tell involve their character being killed by a family member because of some misunderstanding or unapproved love affair, burying the character alive, or something falling/hitting the character on the head so that they then - you guessed it - die.

I had to control my laughter the first couple of times this happened because I couldn't believe that was how multiple kids were ending their stories. Now, I realize that it is meant to be funny and my laughter is wanted and appreciated.

After story time (which I've moved outside under the one tree in the "courtyard") we talk about a vocabulary word that relates to story telling and then do some creative art. Creative art was another tough concept to sell, but I think we're finally up and running 4 weeks in.

I draw a shape on the board and ask the kids what they can make out of the shape. They give me a fairly simplistic (and often entirely nonsensical) answer and then they draw what they imagined the shape to be.

Then... the best part: one by one they come running up to ask:

"Madame, do you like it?"

I do like it. I like the whole gosh-darn thing.