lolwat
(Source: s-coperta, via theslowwink)
currently alive and posting out of Accra, Ghana!
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"We are, as a group, anti-fanny-pack as much as we are pro-gay-marriage. Hetero marriage, on the other hand, we can pretty much take or leave."
The Village Voice, 50 Reasons to be Pretty Damn Euphoric You Live in NYC
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you come swimming into view and i’m hanging on your words like i always used to do
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"What do you think? I’m not a starfish or a pepper tree. I’m a living, breathing human being. Of course I’ve been in love."
Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami (via fuckyeahliteraryquotes)
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a voice for Africa
In parts of the world, religion struggles for relevance. But you’ve been at the forefront of political struggle for decades.
It’s not just a political struggle. We’ve had controversies about the ordination of women. You have to ask: “What is God’s vision on this one?” And almost always you can bet your bottom dollar that God is going to be on the side of the one who is being clobbered. We need women. Then there’s the whole question of sexual orientation. I would not be able to worship a God who was homophobic. I wouldn’t understand how in this one instance, Jesus would be found supporting those who were oppressing others.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2023562,00.html#ixzz11tBY1YLs -
"If there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it walls, and we will furnish it with soft, red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweller’s felt so that we should never hear it. Love me, because love doesn’t exist, and I have tried everything that does."
Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer (via fuckyeahliteraryquotes)
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Human Compasses
Today was day number two for me at La Enobal Junior High School in Labadi, a neighborhood of Accra. I arrived at 8 am, a little bewildered by the time of day (when do I ever get up at 6 am in Africa??) and confused as to what my day would actually hold. I thought I was supposed to be teaching Social Studies at 8 am, but when I arrived, it seemed the other Social Studies teacher already had my class. Sweet, thought I, since that meant I wouldn’t have class until 10. My mind wandered to fine day dreams of my couch and my air conditioner and a thirty minute nap. It wasn’t to be.
The other Social Studies teacher eventually came out and said he had been stalling for time waiting for me (what? why did you write a whole chapter on the board then? and I have yet to see a teacher have an issue being late to class, and I wasn’t even late, I was on time!) but I went in. I had mixed feelings about this Social Studies class, considering the one yesterday was nothing but what is was: draining. I recognized some of the kids in this room as the ones who had invaded the room yesterday, so I politely informed them they could help me teach today, as I was going to have to do the whole lesson over. I was dreading it.
I turned out to be wrong. Having only 35 kids today made a huge difference, and instead of over-planning and feeling nervous, I approached today’s lesson more casually. We discussed vocab and I called kids to the board to write out the compass. Then I took the whole class outside to make ourselves a human compass using the sun. We spent a good 5 minutes shouting north south east west and turning around and pointing at the cardinal directions and laughing before we ran back inside. Instead of using a work sheet today, I made a map on the board and had the kids give me directions as I drew it with chalk, that way I could help guide them until they totally got the hang of it. Then we played a game! I split them into two teams, and we reviewed everything we had learned, and the kids got really into it. In fact, when class was over, their next teacher decided not to come teach them, so they came and found me during my break and we kept playing the review game. 2 different teachers and the headmaster came in to yell at us for making too much noise, and at times it did get a little out of control/competitive for my liking. But the thing was, they learned and they were having fun doing it. I feel pretty good about that.
After the break it was time for my first LitWorld Girls Clubin Ghana! I was so excited to get this project started, and it felt like such a long time coming since I have been here for two months trying to find a venue for the program. Finally Ghanaian schools started, and with that, so too could my Girls Club. I went into my English Language class (the one I had yesterday) and called all the girls to bring their notebooks and come with me. My supplies were pretty limited (aka none, not even a classroom) so I took the girls into a vacant cinderblock shell of a school building next door. We sat on the ground - stressful as the girls did not want to get their skirts dirty - and I began to explain who I was, who LitWorld was, and what this special time we were going to have every Thursday was. It was slow going at first, so I tried a name game. Unfortunately, the name game we had used at the Girls Prep Girls Club (finding an adjective that starts with the first letter of your name, a la Marvelous Madison) automatically didn’t work for Ghana. The adjectives idea was difficult to explain, and the girls didn’t really understand what I was asking them to do. I got a lot of blank stares. So I looked at my supplies (few papers, one pen) and had the girls rip a page out of each of their notebooks. I wrote my name in the middle of one of my papers, and had them do the same. Then I asked them to write things they like about themselves around their names, and things they like in general that they think are good about their lives. I started out showing them my ideas for an example “I am a good writer, I am a great big sister, I am smart” and slowly they caught on. As a side note, I also drew a dog on my page, and a lot of them ended up with various animals on theirs as well, which I thought was adorable.
In the end, the girls had come up with some great stuff. Comments such as “I love myself, I love my big body, I am kind, I am always happy and I like that” abounded, and the girls confidently read aloud their sheets (when I asked who wanted to share first, 3 hands shot up automatically, and the only people who asked to skip asked so they could continue writing!) It was so great to hear positive things coming out of the girls mouths, even as older boys were walking by and taunting us (I told them to go away, and told the girls to ignore the annoying boys, because in all fairness they were being pretty annoying). After that, the girls asked if we could learn a song, so we learned the Hello Song from the curriculum. I had no idea what the tune was so I just made something up - the girls were dead set on singing and said they would help, and they did, and we sang it twice, and I had to promise to sing it again every meeting! Evidently my voice doesn’t break Ghanaian windows.
After that, we went over the seven strengths. All the girls were eager to write them down, and we talked about what they meant to us. The girls were particularly attracted to Sisterhood, Compassion, Respect, and Esteem, and really loved the idea that the Girls Club was our club and we are all sisters and we can express ourselves any way we want. They also perked up at the word Hope, and I talked about my hopes for them in the club, and asked them this week to write their hopes for themselves in the future. I’m so excited about the responses. We parted ways with the goodbye song (the goodbye version of my terrible rendition of the hello song) and I got many requests to come back tomorrow so we can have fun again. I wish I could go every day!
Post-Girls Club was another English class. The other English teacher decided to send me her class, so I was saddled with another 60 kid room. This time it went much smoother though (I think I was riding on Girls Club euphoria), and we spent another day going through pronouns, subjects and objects. I really wanted to make sure they got it, so we did tons of examples on the board, we did pronoun sentences in every which way, and finally we did an in class exercise (everyone had done so well at the homework, the other English teacher suggested I check to see if they could do it on their own.) There were 11 blanks the kids had to fill in, and I graded them at the end of class - everyone did great! Plenty of 11s, 10/11s, and 9/11s, which was really encouraging. I wrote nice little notes in the books and explanations of my corrections, and when I handed out some of the notebooks at the end the kids who had perfect! written in their notebook lit up. I wonder if that normally happens, but also I don’t care: I’m a glutton for positive reinforcement.
I left today feeling FANTASTIC. I got a cheering goodbye from my class and requests to come tomorrow and I just feel really accomplished and in love with Ghana in a totally different way than I have been so far. Also, I really like teaching. It seems I am recalibrating my own human compass. -
My first day of school.
So today was my first day teaching in my own classroom. I’ve taught at camp before, and I have led a Girls Club in Manhattan, but never have I been given a text book, an hour, and a bunch of children and been expected to record attendance, grades, give exams, and impart important knowledge onto their being. I was pretty nervous.
I showed up at school, and was led into my first classroom: 6th grade English Language. This was the class’ first class out of primary school (in the big Middle School now, I remember that moment), so I introduced myself and asked all of them their names. They were all biblical and adorable. We talked about the good old USA, Obama, Will Smith, and cleared up a little confusion as to whether Queen Elizabeth was American or not before we got down to the lesson: pronouns. We all knew what a noun was, so we learned the general idea of a pronoun, before breaking it down into subject and object pronouns. Having never taught before, it took me a little while to catch on to giving exercises and examples and repeating myself, but it seemed like by the end everyone had it understood. We labeled out subjects and objects in an exercise, got some homework, and then everyone excitedly asked me if I would be returning tomorrow. It was pretty great, although I am still nervous I am going to permanently wreck these young children’s understanding of pronouns.
My second class was 7th grade (or maybe 8th grade) social studies. When I first walked in, there were only about 32 students in the class after the half hour long break between classes (which strikes me as excessive, but what do I know?) By the time class began, however, there were over 60 students crammed into every crack and crevass of the room. I asked the class prefect for the roll and whether or not every student was in this class, to which she informed me they were not, but that their teacher had sent them in to learn my lesson. Great. So we started out with an introduction, some vocabulary for the day (Compass, Landmark, Cardinal Points, Intermediate Points). We learned how to draw a compass, we learned how to make ourselves into a human compass using the sun (or at least I hope we did…) and then we tried to understand landmarks. I gave them a worksheet I made up that I thought was pretty simple, with a map of a neighborhood with landmarks (Ghanaian landmarks! like a chopbar, church, soccer pitch) that they had to use to give directions. I forgot to put a typed out example on the worksheet, which I will remember for next time (that may be my most distinct teacher lesson for the day - examples examples examples), but a lot of the students seemed to get it at the end. They had their directions a little messed up, but I was mostly focused on the idea of them using landmarks to give directions, because that is absolutely ESSENTIAL in Ghanaian culture. I’ll go over it with them tomorrow.
The thing about that class is that 60 kids is just toooo many in a class. I couldn’t keep everyone not talking, even though I asked politely, sternly, every way pretty much. At one point, the prefect brought me in a switch, which seems to be what the other teachers use, but that is clearly and very obviously absolutely not an option for me. Hopefully normally I will only have 30, so I can actually work with the students and get to know them. It turns out that during my social studies class, all the teachers decided to leave school. I found this out because at the end, no teacher showed up to teach mathematics, so when the prefect went to find the math teacher, he said he was busy and I should keep teaching. So I went to find him, and he said all the teachers had left to go to a welcome lunch, and they would be back later, so I could stay or leave. I had to leave, but that was a little concerning. Anyway, I gave them some homework, and I’m hoping tomorrow will be smoother for social studies!
I really enjoyed it overall, though. I loved English, and I have those students again tomorrow, which is fantastic. They are also going to be the students I have for my Girls Club tomorrow too which I am SO excited for! So here is to my first day of teaching!
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i applied to work at the white house. thus i must eat Ghanaian Obama biscuits to guarantee success.
Theme: Linear by Peter Vidani
