Blog

Tales from Ghana: Promising Progress and Exciting Opportunities

Last week I spent several days at Manso Adubia Senior High School meeting with teachers and our scholarship recipients near the Millennium Village of Bonsaaso. Upon first meeting the Adubia Headmaster, I knew that this was a school capable of great things. At Adubia, the excitement toward using the ICT resources is strong, but the teachers lack the basic ICT skills needed to take full advantage of the computers and Internet. The ICT Coordinator is fast at work to get all the teachers trained in basic computer skills so that they can begin using the laptops in their classrooms.
 
Again, I was blown away by the motivation and selflessness of these students who, despite the hardships they face, have committed themselves to helping their communities become stronger. One recipient told me that he wants to be a judge because, paraphrasing his words, too often those in power take advantage of illiterate and uneducated people, and he wants to be able to stand up for justice. Some of the girls said they wanted to return to their villages as trained nurses or teachers, because currently their villages have no such professionals. Some of these students have, in the past year, faced deaths and illnesses of parents, and lack of adequate family support for basic provisions such as food and sanitary pads, and yet they attend school every day. The students are excited to begin an after school program focused on basic computer skills and cross-cultural learning through CTL’s School-To-School Connections program.
 
I am looking forward to continuing our collaboration with the ICT coordinators, headmasters and teachers over the coming weeks to design a training that we will conduct when Connect To Learn Director, Kara Nichols, joins me for a visit to the schools in Bonsaaso later this month on integration of ICT resources to enhance their curricular content. Additionally, over the past week I have been working with the ICT Coordinator at Monsoman Senior High School to draft a plan that will enable the teachers to be able to extend the use of the laptops outside the computer lab and into their classrooms. It is clear that at both Adubia and Monsoman, there is much enthusiasm for the new resources, and teachers are excited to build their skills so that they can take optimal advantage of the tools Connect To Learn is providing.
 
In addition to developing the ICT integration training for both schools and the laptop-usage plan at Monsoman, our next steps are working with the schools’ leadership to finalize concrete plans for the implementation of an after-school program focused on girls leadership skills and the implementation of our School-To-School Connections program to support the use of ICT for cross-cultural learning. We are aiming to launch both at the beginning of the new school year in the fall. I am looking forward to all that we will accomplish together.

Tara Stafford is a graduate student at Teachers College, Columbia University and is currently interning with UNESCO in Accra, Ghana in addition to her volunteer work with Connect To Learn in the Millennium Village of  Bonsaaso in the Ashanti Region of Ghana.