Albert Einstein enlargement in charcoal, 7th grade

No Water

As Rosana Rosana Dana says,"It's always something."  Life in an art room is tricky with no water.  And it's not like there is a sink in my room anyway.  But without water, things like painting, print making, glue, and charcoals are quite difficult.  But that is Ghana, and life here is always a challenge.  

Ray Charles enlargement, 8th grade

I am soooo proud of how far my students have come.  My 7th and 8th graders finished up portrait enlargements.   This was quite exciting because many of my students doubted their ability to make an enlargement, but they did and did it with flying colors.  The funny part of the story is that most of the people they did were not people they knew about.  I had this student ask me who this guy was.  I replied, "Albert Einstein, scientist and mathematician."  "Who's that?" And a whole new discussion ensued.  The same applied for nearly every person that I had my students enlarging.  Ray Charles, Maya Angelou, Martin Luther King Jr. were all unknowns, but Usher, Beyonce, Nelson Mandela, were icons that every student knew. 

6th grade bird mask

This week was a blast with work beginning on the printing press for the junior high students.  Students are busy carving and using negative space.  They are attacking social issues that are meaningful and real to them and are fully engrossed in their work. Stay tuned for pictures illustrating their messages to their community and to you in a subsequent post.  

The 6th grade finished up their masks.  I choreographed an entrance dance for the school assembly and we strutted our stuff showing off our work.  They looked awesome!!!  The student body responded positively with squeals of laughter.  Every Friday is Africa day which means that the teachers are expected to wear African attire.  I have had my own dress made and I made my grand entrance with mask and outfit. 

I really am so proud of what my students have accomplished. These last days will be hard to swallow as I am quite attached to my students.  I have already seen a shift in the way my students are treating me.  They cry and hold my hand and plead with me to stay.  It's quite touching and I'm sure I will fall apart when the end comes.  

Internet has been difficult for me to get lately, so my next post may be when I return to the states.  Happy Thanksgiving to all!  There is sooooooooooooooo much to be grateful for.

In the Spirit of Halloween

1st grade cyclops

I had to laugh when my evaluator came from the UK and watched me teach in my 1st grade classroom.  He later said in his very polite Welsh accent, "I don't really think that small children are your strong suit."  I couldn't agree more.  I often have to remind myself when my 1st graders are eating my supplies or copying my every line drawn that there was a reason I chose secondary education and that evaluation just proves that point.  

4-eyed 3-mouthed vomiting alien

The Scariest of All....Frankenmom
This is what I feel like when I wake up

I love watching the enthusiasm that my 1st graders have, but it is the sheer chaos they can cause and vampire-like ability to suck every last living drop of energy I have from my body.  In Ghana, kindergarten is controlled with the cane and I understand why even though I do not agree with this.  They are wild and the culture doesn't support alternative methods of discipline. So after one very rough day, I needed an outlet and aliens were the answer. I taught them something new...fantasy. They worked diligently on crayon resist aliens with multiple eyes, mouths, and vomit that actually made me laugh. I was silently celebrating the horror of Halloween vicariously through my little monsters. Touche 1st grade, touche!

My friend Pam asked me if I was going to dress up today.  This too, made me laugh. If I dressed up as anything today, I think it would label me as a true freak...not to deny that I am, but it just wouldn't go well here.  In fact, I thought of  all the ramifications of me dressing up.  The local exorcists would likely pay me a visit as well as the animist shaman. Not only I, but my host family would likely be cursed.  And I am certain that I would give a new reason for babies to be afraid of me.  

Reminds me of the local masks
which are usually to scare away evil 

But silently, in my head, I am dressing up.   I am "Super Freak" inspired by dear, dear friend and sister in freakiness, Pam. If I were to dress up, I  would wear a superman t-shirt with a harlequin mini skirt, Hello Kitty tights, rainbow hair, bobble bug antenna, groovy 70s era glasses with implanted goofy eyes,  stripey socks and old school roller skates. Despite the warning that Edna Mode gives in The Incredibles, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M68ndaZSKa8) I would definitely don a sparkly cape.  My theme music would be Super Freak and I would skate through the villages (on the imaginary paved road) waving to all the children throwing candy. That is my Halloween.

Thinking of a mug of hot spiced cider and a chilly Washington fall day where, for just once, the clothes don't stick to your body.  Happy Halloween Everyone!

A Day in the Life

5th graders creating chalk pastel color wheels

Art is never dull.  And, I've discovered that when you are teaching the very first art class that your students have ever taken, you can expect the unexpected.  Things that you take for granted, like using scissors or glue, or understanding the basic properties of certain mediums, like crayons are just not part of the inherent knowledge of your students.  

7th graders evaluating their own work (unsolicited)

Additionally, there are surprises like the seeing the hidden talents of your students in  charcoal portraiture, or when students have wide grins when seeing the fruits of their own work come together, or the audible "oooh" when a student mixes paints together for the first time to make another color.    Considering the fact that these students have never done anything artistic formally in school, they are quite good!
Even the other teachers in the school are now coming by the classroom to see what is being worked on and are impressed.  

This week I have introduced abstract art to 4th graders, drawing faces in wax resist to first graders, charcoal portraiture to 7th and 8th graders, negative space to 3rd graders, and color theory to 5th and 6th graders.  Phew!  Scroll through the blog for various pictures.

Student Working on a half portrait of Nelson Mandela in charcoal

Math teacher with abacus

Additionally, I have taken some time this week to photograph what goes on in other classrooms too.  What I thought was most interesting is that math classes are taught using an abacus.  I know the abacus has recently resurfaced in schools as a very useful math tool, but it is interesting to see it in use (especially in schools where we are lucky to have electricity on occasion and technology is simply not available).  There are competitions in mental math (based off of abacus schooling) regularly televised on Ghanaian TV.  

I really wish I could include many more pictures, but my internet time at the cafe is about to run out and they are closing.  This week concludes with mid-term exams all of which I wrote last weekend as well as a visit from my overseas UK supervisor who will evaluate my student teaching and get to see why I don't communicate often enough via internet.

Until next time, be well and be grateful for the things that you have, great and small.

Greetings from the art room of Auntie Asa.  That's how the students address me.  I am including a photo that is intentionally blurry due to my FERPA obligations.  This is a typical after-school day.  If I stay late, students will come into my room.  In fact, they are often there immediately after classes are dismissed.  I  have told students that they can only stay in my room if they work on class projects.  I would allow them to do otherwise, but I simply can't afford to lose the resources they suck up doing fun extra projects.  Even so, students LOVE to do art work!  They will spend a lot of time working to perfect their class work.

I even had a breakthrough moment this morning.  One of my eighth grade students came into class before school to work on a project that he has been intentionally bad mouthing and showing disinterest at during class.  It turns out, he is quite talented, but just has a real low self confidence level.  He was so concerned about what I thought about his work, that he would check in with me every 5 minutes and ask if I liked it.  I finally asked him if he liked it.  Did he think it was his best work?  What did he think he could do to improve it? .......long pause.......and he quietly went back to his table and worked uninterrupted silently for the next 30 minutes.  Not sure how to interpret that, but something shifted in his attitude.  It was palpable.  This is the adventure in teaching.

Some people have been asking about the mechanics of living here.  What do I eat?  How do I exist?  Well, I live with a host family in a town that is about a 15 minute tro-tro ride away.  Tro-tros are old beat up passenger vans that cart people from place to place.  There are busses, but they do not come by frequently.  There is no such thing as a tro-tro stop or a bus stop.  If you want one, you simply hail one from the side of the road by waiving.  They will slow down enough for you to yell out your destination, if they have room, and will stop if they are going in the same direction.

My house is posh by Ghanaian standards.  I have electricity, running water (which is collected from the rain gutters and stored in polytanks and transferred into the well), and a room to myself with a ceiling fan.  The problem is that the electricity is out so frequently that I cannot often charge my laptop.  This also means that internet is out of the question...the nearby internet cafes will also not have power.  I have to do all of my own laundry by hand.  This can be tedious because of my schedule.  I understand now why getting up with the sun is so important.  There are so often no lights at night.

As for food, I eat just about anything now.  My stomach is accustomed to the bacteria in the food here and I no longer get diarrhea.  My favorite local food are the morning porridge called koko.  Koko is a combo of grains (rice and wheat) with peanut butter, medicinal herbs like moringa, and spices to taste.  Each batch of koko is different.  Fufu (a mashed cassava and plantain) dough that is made into one large dumpling is also interesting and is served in a variety of sauces and stews eaten communally and with the fingers.  Jollof rice is very nice as well.  Waiche (spelling?) is also a favorite which is beans and rice with fried plaintain...a varitey of this is also Redred which has more of a gravy to the beans.  Kenkey is much akin to polenta and is used, like yams, as a dipping tool to scoop up sauces.  There is much much more.  I love having the plethora of tropical fruits at hand.  Currently in season are papayas, pineapple, plantains, bananas, passion fruit and watermelon.  Mangoes are just coming on.  I also love eating cocoa plucked from the tree, the pods dried in the sun and crushed to make cocoa in the kitchen.  Wow!

That's about all for now, I hope I didn't leave you with a cocoa desire.  Ironically, chocolate is pretty hard to come by here.  But, if I did, go get your fix with a nice Chocolove bar and think of me.  Until next time....

Be well!

Teaching in Africa

I apologize up front for my long absence from the digital world.  My teaching assignment started a week early and I literally packed up my things and dashed off to the capital to begin teaching with no lesson plans or anything prepared as I thought I had another week to do so.  Talk about being thrown in!  The other contributing factor is that I don't often have reliable internet.  Not only is electricity hard to rely on, but internet is very very slow.  Welcome to the world of modems.

After my first three weeks at the school, I am getting to know the customs and culture and have made fast friends with my students.  I am teaching 1st grade through 9th grade, and I didn't expect this at all.  In fact, I expected to have junior and senior high school students. I also didn't expect the total lack of supplies that a typical school here experiences.  This means that ALL of the things we take for granted like staplers, paper clips, tape, glue, etc.  are all difficult and expensive things to obtain.  So, the supplies I brought with me are a god send and I am thankful that I have them.

Some of the supplies that I put on the container ship have been trickling in.  That means that these supplies were removed from the ship and stuck in various persons' luggage.  This is actually much more hassle free.  I do expect a shipment of long awaited paints to arrive in a few weeks.

Art Ed is a wondrous experience.  Teaching it, I have found, is starting from the very, very beginning.  Most students have had no exposure to art.  My students are over-enthusiastic.  They jump into things with gusto, and because I challenge the older students, they often stress out about doing quality work.

For those of you who have donated funds for my art supplies, know that every single dollar has been used and appreciated.  You are altering lives and giving students an opportunity to experience something that they have not ever encountered before.  Some have asked me if I need more money, and simply, the answer is yes.  You can continue to donate funds, and I will literally scour the markets for the items I need.  For instance, I found paper plates and foil the other day...a rare find indeed.  I have been searching for weeks for tempera paints and have not yet found them, but have them coming with my program supervisor in October.

Since I cannot exactly post pictures of students while I am student teaching, I can post some of their work.  This is a 4th grade student's work on pattern and the one below is a 5th grade student's work on line.

Oh, that is another thing....student work has NEVER been displayed before, and I have been exhibiting their work on the outside classroom walls.  This has solicited interesting repsonses from both students and parents.  At first, the students were embarassed to have their work out there for public display.  Now, they LOVE it.  They have turned into little braggers.  Students love to compare what they are doing with others and also love showing off to their parents.  I am going to try to get some of their work installed in a local restaurant or in some other public place.  I am in the capital after all.

That's it for my first reflection.  I will do a better job of keeping you all posted.  Know that all is well and art is alive in the schools in Ghana!