Half of 12 is 7

Ok NOW I’m teaching I Ghana. I taught one class all week (6 periods/wk) and picked up a second one today (6 periods/wk) and I will have more when the first year students arrive in 3 weeks. The teachers come to the students’ room in Ghana so I’m teaching in two different places. I’m teaching second year students (10th/11th graders). My first classroom needs some work… (see picture of floor below) but it’s in an older classroom block that they are hopefully replacing. It has a blackboard that is really a cinderblock wall painted black. It eats chalk and is hard to read, so after the first day, I went out and purchased a white board. And, yes, they have white boards in Ghana. I actually got this one on the side of the road from the ‘white board man’ who was between the ‘pineapple/banana lady’ and the ‘furniture maker’. The only problem is that I have to have two students come to my house and get it each class and then bring it back. (However, this is quite a popular task). My second classroom is fine-it even has a white board in it! (Did I mention that I have 46 students in one class and 56 in the other?)

Classes are going well, I’m speaking slowly and they seem to understand me. I’ve been able to make them laugh and that’s always key. I did the old “Half of 12 is 7” thing…they looked confused…I said, ”Well it is in the US”…they began to challenge…I told them it was good to challenge your teacher if you thought she was wrong but in this case I wasn’t…they shook their heads…I shook my head and sighed…I wrote XII on the board, we agreed it was twelve, then I erased the bottom half…I had ‘em.

Wednesday I noticed that a few students were having some trouble with Venn Diagram problems. I offered to do a short extra help that night at 6:30-would anyone be interested? Yes, some nodded. At 6:30 3 students appeared at my door to take me to a meeting hall. They said they needed to bring the white board (my trademark?) because the lighting was bad. When we got to the dimly lit hall-board in tow-there were 32 (!) students, with notes out, all sitting clustered around a place they had set up for my board. Too cute…too motivated!