The World Teacher Ghana -project sent ten Finnish teachers and education professionals to Ghana to two different regions to share their expertise to the local teachers. Here you can read how the adventure got started in the town of Hohoe.
Today was a very exciting day, because we finally had the opportunity to meet the Ghanaian teachers! On the weekend we travelled the long way from Helsinki, Finland to first Accra and then our lovely town Hohoe in Volta Region, Ghana. Yesterday we prepared and planned this day and I guess everybody have been waiting for to really start the program.
In the morning we travelled to the Centre of Education, where we had our seminar day. At the place it took some time, African time, to get all the participants to the place, but then we could start our program for the day. All the Dutch teachers had prepared some program for the day, and we Finns have joined planning on Monday. The local organisation Savana Signatures, Dutch organisation Edukans and Finnish organisation Finn Church Aid all wanted to give a warm welcome for the participants of this project. Savana Signatures introduced the Star School program and Edukans made it clear that this time we are concentrating to good supervision of learning, well-trained and motivated teachers and good school management.
Then we were divided into school groups. All the Finnish and Dutch teachers are going to split up to five different schools in this region. We searched the teachers from our school and then started to discuss their school: what teachers are proud of, what they would like to improve and add and what they would like to throw away. It was very interesting to hear about the school and I believe we can use this information later on when we are planning our school visits.
On the lunch break we had time to get to know better all the Ghanaian teachers and have a nice talk about teaching in Ghana, the school system here and of course personal life. I also learned some words in the local language. In Ghana there are 25 different languages, but in the Lolobi Ashiambi school the students will talk Siuw-language. Teachers of the school cannot speak this language much, because nobody is really coming from the region. The common language used in schools is always English. But tomorrow I can say to the students ”Asare?”(How are you?) and the answer will be ”Eee..”( I´m fine.)
In the afternoon we organised workshops for the Ghanaian teachers. The topics were Active Learning, Learning with the natural materials, Giving and receiving Feedback, Learning with cards and Energisers. The workshops seemed to be very successful and people were interacting and discussing a lot. During the whole day everyone was very open minded and there was a positive and good atmosphere, where all of the teachers must have learned something new. There was also lot of energisers during the day, in one of them, teachers made a real pyramid! During the day I heard lots of laugh, I saw smiling and excited faces, I met active people who are eager to learn. And I met teachers, who are passionate about their work. Even the day was long and everybody must have felt tired after the day, I believe that we all left with refreshed and happy minds.
-Sanna
