Blogs from Akrokerri, Ashanti, Ghana, Africa

5/23/10 A thousand apologies. I know it’s been a really long time since I posted last, and my only excuse is that I’m getting lazy in my old age. Here is a quick rundown of what has happened since I last wrote. We had end of term exams, my parents came to visit, there was an all volunteer conference, it was my birthday, I had my close of service conference, chose my COS date (my last day as a Peace Corps Volunteer), started the third and final term of school, my project to put bars over the windows and doors of the computer lab is almost finished, and we’ve been frantically planning for the STARS conference next week. I could leave it there, but I think I’ll elaborate a little bit more on some of the ... read more

2/1/10 Hey everybody, how’s life? Life in Ghana is busy but wonderful. Most importantly, we have started the second term of the school year. I am proud to say that during the first week of school I actually held classes. That might not sound like a big deal to you, but at Asare Bediako SHS in Ghana, that is something to be commended. Last year, I was lucky if I was able to hold class by the third week of the term. During the first week I’d estimate that over half of the students had reported to school. New form 1 students are still reporting to school so I still don’t have a set register for all the students in my classes. I should note that we still don’t have a headmaster, but at this point ... read more

11/30/09 Hey everybody. I know I haven’t written in a while, so I’ll get right to it. As you can imagine, a lot has happened in the last month. Most importantly, I’ve finally started teaching the freshers. The term freshers, is the Ghanaian equivalent to freshman in that it refers to the form 1 students. On the down side, the term is basically over since this is revision week and end of term exams begin next week. Since the form 1s have been here for less than half the term they won’t have any end of term exams so I’ll be able to teach them through revision week and hopefully through the exam weeks as well. It looks like I’ll get 4 or 5 weeks of teaching in to the form 1s this term. We still ... read more

10/9/09 How’s it going everybody? I’m doing great incase you were wondering. This past week has been pretty relaxed. As I mentioned last time, I’m teaching the form 1 students again and they aren’t at school yet so I didn’t teach this week. This week we did receive the list of students placed to our school though, so that’s a step in the right direction. They haven’t given a date for the form 1s to report to school yet, but it should be within the next two weeks. In reality, I’ll probably start actually teaching after the midterm break. Along the lines of people not yet at school, the new Headmaster still hasn’t arrived. I’m not sure if GES (Ghana Education Service) has failed to hire someone yet, or if the person is just hesitant to ... read more

8/14/09 Hey everybody. I hope it hasn’t been too long since I wrote last, but there hasn’t really been any breaking news from my end of the world lately. When I wrote last, I was in the middle of marking exams. I am proud to say that I buckled down and got all my exams marked by the end of the term. Unfortunately I wasn’t done with all my school work when I finished actually marking the exams. Then, I had to go through all the exams and add up the scores from each question to get the total score for the theory section. Then, I had to enter all the scores into the computer so I could calculate the finals grades for all the students. Thankfully I was able to utilize excel and the fill ... read more