Practicum

They keep us pretty busy, and the last time i tried to post, it didn't work so well. I just finished two weeks of practicum teaching at a Senior Secondary School (SS) in Koforidua called GHANASS. The school happens to be one of the best in Ghana, and it is really nice. It is not really like a high school in the US, at all. It is a boarding school, there are three grades (form 1,2,and 3) the students wear uniforms and, for the most part, are very well behaved. If they aren't they can be caned. They are fed at the school, and there are dorms on the campus, but the dorms are locked during the day, so the students don't really have much freedom, they have to go to class. They certainly can't leave the closed campus without special permission. It took some getting used to, but I understand the Ghanaian school system better now because of my time there.

I will teach integrated sciences at my site, so i practiced teaching chemistry, physics and biology. My class was form 1s, so they were pretty young, but very smart. I'm told that most schools in Ghana are not as nice and the students are not as good. Even at such a good school, there was a significant lack of basic materials. there were few extra pens, paper etc. The students were nice, but they started acting up because they thought I was soft. I was not as authoritarian as the teachers they were used to. I still need more practice before I feel like I'm ready to lead my own class, but I'm getting there.