My First Week of School...well kinda

The students have been here for a week. Classes will start next Monday (22nd) I think… So, what went on this week? Well, the students spent a day ‘moving in’. This reminded me of the now 3 times I have taken a child to ‘Move-In Day’ at the college dorms-except each student only had a mattress, a backpack and a small duffel or crate. That’s it, for fourteen weeks. They arrived by foot, by taxi or in family cars, with a parent(s) or alone, from all over Ghana. Their bags were searched-mainly to make sure that the girls didn’t bring any dresses (uniforms only) and no one had electronics (plug in) stuff. If they couldn’t pay the $180 school fees they were sent home.

The second day there was a 4 hr faculty meeting. The kids sat in classrooms.

The next day I had a meeting with the Math Dept and then there were the Opening Ceremonies. The easiest way to describe this is like a big musical gospel church service, with some announcements and rules thrown in. The music was amazing-I’m going to get some better equipment and do the singing justice but here’s a clip of part of the first song-it got much wilder at times and the school choir (with one day of practice) was amazing.
Now the interesting thing is what happened Thursday and Friday. The students sat in their classrooms all day (each class remains in one place and the teachers rotate in) but there were no teachers. The master schedule isn’t done. It will be done by Monday. It will be hand written. No worries.

Just a mention of a few (and it was really only a few) constructive things I did this week. Those of you who have talked to me this week know that I spent 2 ½ days without power… but that whole issue can be another entry sometime. I began ‘training’ the math teachers on using the TI-83 calculators, I have set up a framework for assessing what the teachers know and training them on the computer…(oh wait, we don’t have any, no worries, I’ll figure something out) but also interesting is that I volunteered to put the staff/phone#s/addresses etc. onto a spread sheet for them. Those of you that work with me know that I pretty much ban any Excel data entry I’m asked to do, plead ignorance, and have someone else do it for me! But I’m coming out of the closet now and admitting I guess I do know what I’m doing J All I know is that I was treated like a queen after I produced this simple list…. I guess I’ll show the Finance person how to let Excel add columns of numbers next week…to be continued.