My new job - computer teacher!

Yesterday I went down to the local school just near the entrance of the mine to volunteer my time and whatever skills I may be able to offer! I was thinking maybe help teach english, or maths or science - but when I asked, they said they would love to have some help in the computer room. (They also said they would love to have more computers - did I want to buy some?!)

There are 1000 children at the school (Kindergarten to Year 10), and they have between 40 and 50 children in each class! For those of you who are teachers - can you imagine that! The classrooms are open sided rooms with concrete floors and old style wooden desks with lift up lids, a blackboard - and that's it. Very simple. In the computer room, they have six computers - one at each bench, and so have about 7 children crowded around each computer.

I sat in a few computer classes for Year 4 and 5 - they have just started learning about computers, and they were doing revision for exams which start next week. Its a different style of teaching - they learn everything by rote and it has to be perfect. For example, the teacher asked, "What is the meaning of "click"? And a child would have to stand up and repeat "Click means to press and release the left, or primary, mouse key one time without the mouse moving or shaking". I know it off by heart now too, because they repeated it over and over for about 10 minutes until they said it perfectly! Then they moved on - to "double click" ! I'd watched the kids play computer games before school and during recess, so I knew they understood the concept of "click" perfectly, even if they didn't recite the meaning correctly. As with children around the world, I suspect they'll be overtaking their teachers and parents knowledge of computers very quickly.

When they are at school all the children have to have their hair shaved short - girls included! When I asked why they said " If you tie up your hair, you tie up your mind". A wise old Ghanaian proverb. But I suspect its probably to control nits, and also to make everyone the same (they all wear the same uniform too - yellow shirts, brown shorts or skirts). Once they have finished school they can start growing their hair (the girls in particular), so you can almost tell someone's age by the length of their hair! However most of the women here use artificial hair - either braided onto their own hair, hair extensions, hair pieces or wigs! It took me a while to realise that. Latifa who works here normally has long thick braids, then one day she came over with short frizzy hair - I thought she'd cut it all off, but she said that she just took the braids off and will put them on again next week. I'm interested to see how it's done.... The girls often stroke my hair and tell me how beautiful it is! Although one of them described it as "rubbery" - I think (hope) she meant flexible!

Anyway, back to the school.... They have exams for the next two weeks and then they have their long holiday for six weeks until mid-September, so hopefully I'll go back and help out a bit more then.