Day 31 - School

Monday, April 11 - Day 31

I got to see the kids up at Word of Faith this morning in their classes, which I absolutely loved. Marilyn, a white woman who teaches the first-grade class there, gave me a tour when Jackie and I took a tro up late morning. Jackie got sponsorship info this trip but will return for a tour when not in workout clothes.

I had two highlights of the tour. The first was watching the little pre-K kids who had just laid down for a nap. Godwyn, the last to go down, stared at me tiredly from his spot on the mat next to Beauty. Even in a room of 20-something children ages 3 and younger, those two are always together. My other highlight was seeing Kwame Adu’s face ligth up in his front-row-center seat when I came to the door of the grade 3 classroom. He gave me a discreet but enthusiastic wave. He can be such a charming kid sometimes.

As per Marilyn at church yesterday, class sizes vary dramatically. She has eleven first-graders and the high school classes looked to have around five kids each but some of the middle grades top 30 students. A future expansion goal is to split those larger grades into two smaller classes.

School today looked like I might expect school to look from my upbringing. Kindergartners colored inside the lines, older kids sat at orderly rows of individual desks learning science or English, and each classroom was decorated with age-appropriate, curriculum-related facts (e.g., definition of an angle, question about average of three football-game attendances, a basic number line; many to most were, happily, math-related). At both Methodist and Catholic school, kids ran amok in the unadorned, uncolorful classroom as teachers met with parents. Here, a teacher’s aide watched attentively as Marilyn’s class continued to work silently in her absence. Kids learned. I can certainly see why the kids find the transition to WoF from Methodist so difficult.

Jackie and I also visited the seamstress this morning. She had been sick since our last visit; I left more fabrics and we will return on Thursday.

Early this evening, George, Bismark, and I walked about an hour to a place George knew of up near WoF where Bismark can get passport pictures taken for his league registration for football. They were out of ink and told us to return tomorrow. The trotro back took under ten minutes, but I enjoyed the leisurely pace of the conversation-quiet walk up there along the busy main road into Dodowa. It’s paved and boasts a constant stream of cars, most only passing through en route to Madina and Accra beyond.