The ripple effect: Teacher development in Ghana
Jeremiah Kpetaa is a teacher at Lawra Secondary School, the same school he went to as a child. Over the past four years he has worked with VSO volunteers at the District Education Office. Here he tells us how they have helped develop his teaching and leadership skills and how he is using that learning to improve the experience of education for his students.
I enjoy teaching because you help people to discover life and things they can do. Society is about people who can be productive in the system so the opportunity to handle lives at the basic level and help them to discover their talents is rewarding for me. I am always trying to find new things and new skills that will help me in my teaching profession so that I can make an impact on the lives I handle.
Developing teaching skills
The presence of VSO volunteers has opened up a number of things to me. They have really helped me understand more about how to teach. If you are the teacher it is very important that you understand what you are teaching. If you don’t then how can you help your pupils?
In Ghana it is compulsory to teach ICT, but schools are not provided with computers. Without the actual machine I may as well be talking in space. But three VSO volunteers had helped set up the Teacher Resource Centre in Lawra, which includes many resources, books and games a computer room. My school is very close to the Teacher Resource Centre, so I took the opportunity to talk to the VSO volunteers and learn about the computers.
Now I bring students for their practical classes on the machines. I know that the more they interact with the machines the more they will discover things for themselves and then their learning will stay with them. When I have my pupils score high it makes me feel the work that I do has great impact and it excites me, and when I see pupils that are doing well I try to use that to motivate other children.
Developing leadership skills
Last year VSO volunteers organised leadership workshops. I learnt how, as a leader, you should interact with your colleagues and students and relate to them and bring out the best in them. This year the school decided to make me a form teacher. Immediately I told my students: ‘If you are ready to go with the ideas I have, I am more than willing to go beyond what is expected of me.’
So this year I started running after school clubs with them. Most days I sit back after school and wait for them to go home to do their chores and then come back again. Most of my form has joined this after school class. We come to the Teacher Resource Centre after school every Thursday and I prepare games and exercises for them. Because of this, we are having an open day and my pupils and I will be a model for other teachers that I coming so that they can see that the resource centre will be of great help in their teaching.
Motivating girls
With girls I have been designing a system that will help them with their studying. For many of them when they get home or to their villages they are engaged in household chores, but when they have finished their chores the light is gone and there is no electricity. So I help them design how to study, by recommending they talk to their parents to help them to understand the value of education and request that they schedule chores differently or share them with other siblings so that they have time to study. One of these girls has gone on to further study.
VSO volunteers have been very supportive in a number of areas, from policy to implementation. They act as a prompt for the people that are responsible and see that what needs to get done gets done. If VSO continues and all others involved in education also work hard there will be ripple effects that will positively affect our society.
