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Tales from Ghana: Monsoman Senior High School Gets Ready for Take-off

It is Monday morning and I am about to begin my second week at the Millennium Village cluster. Last week I spent three days at the Monsoman Senior High School, one of only two senior high schools in the entire Bonsaaso cluster of thirty communities. I had the opportunity to meet with the Headmaster, the Assistant Headmaster, the school’s ICT coordinator, seven teachers of various subjects, and seven of our nine scholarship recipients at the school.

The most humbling moment was hearing the stories of the students and learning how, until they heard about the scholarship, most of them had been at home, done with junior high school, assuming their dreams of finishing school would remain unfulfilled. I was inspired by the gumption these students had to take it upon themselves and apply for the scholarships, and I felt more honored than ever to be a part of the program providing these motivated students with this opportunity.

The teachers all showed gratitude for the computers and Internet services provided by Connect To Learn and its partner Ericson, but challenges still exist to enabling the teachers to fully utilize these resources, including the fact that the computers are currently restricted to the computer laboratory and only used by the ICT classes. During the week we worked together to identify some ways that we might expand access of the computers to all the teachers of various subjects by establishing a protocol to ensure computer security and teacher accountability and by introducing the teachers to the wealth of educational resources that exist on-line through a training.

I also learned that one of the female ICT teachers and the ICT coordinator had begun an after-school program for the scholarship recipients, primarily the girls, to teach them basic ICT skills since most are still lacking in basic computer skills. We discussed ideas for expanding this program and lending more curricular guidance through CTL’s School-to-School Connections program. The students are excited to begin connecting to other schools in their community and across the Atlantic on a more regular basis through School-to-School Connections.  Over the coming weeks we will build on the ideas generated in the past week so that Monsoman can take optimal advantage of the resources provided by Connect To Learn.