Part one.

"If you teach for the classroom and not for life, you have failed your students."

I'm going to plagiarize twice in this post. That was number one.

A professor of political science, Professor Frempong, here at the University of Ghana, declared the quote above. I am not in his class, nor have I ever met him. I actually stole this piece of wisdom from someone else, who then stole it from him- her name is Alexis. Please credit her, for crediting him.

Now that we have that taken care of, here goes.

For those who choose to pursue a career in education, one must really, really want to teach. I don't think that teaching is something you can fall back on, or just decide to become a part of. I'm positive that you have to love the idea of teaching, love the students who comprise your class, and most certainly love the idea that for eight hours a day, for nearly 10 months, you are the single greatest influence on each of your students' lives.

At least that's what I thought. Last week, I was proven wrong.

La Wireless managed to change my perception of this. La Wireless is a sizeable compound of school buildings made up of 1st-9th grade classrooms. In all, there are probably 4 or 5 buildings, each with 4 or 5 classrooms. In these classrooms you can find anywhere from 15 to 45 students. So, essentially there can be anywhere from 375 to 1,125 students in this "school" at any given time (or maybe my estimation skills could use a little work).

I was originally placed in the junior secondary section of the compound, which is equivalent to an American "middle school." Because my major is elementary education, I asked to switch, and fortunately I'm now in both a 2nd and 3rd grade classroom. I'll be teaching third grade math, and then heading over to the second grade class to do the same. So, here's my first day in a nutshell.

I woke up at 5:30 (yes, AM), to catch the first of two tro-tros (large, over-crowded vans, that are actually quite inexpensive and serve as a surprisingly efficient means of transportation). By 6:30 I was at "37," a tro-tro station, (essentially like a bus station), about 20-25 minutes away (and I'm hoping to give you a visual sometime soon…). After successfully navigating my way to the second tro-tro I needed to take, I was on my way. And by 7:15, I had finally arrived at my destination.

That morning I met the teacher who I would be working with, chatted a little with her, and waited for the kids to return from their outdoor assembly (kind of like a morning Pledge of Allegiance). When they were back, and getting settled into their seats, I was handed a primary mathematics book for level 3 and told, "you should start now… if we waited for every student to come, we would not have enough time."

So, here I am, wondering if I had just heard her correctly. I was just given a lesson book, and told to teach… I wasn't able to ease my way into this new endeavor, nor was I given the chance to just observe for a little while to see how class was run. Instead, it was simply "good luck, Mr. Kyle". (As nice as the last part might have been, she didn't actually say that…)

Overall it wasn't as bad as it sounds, and I'm sure I provided the class full of 45 little Ghanaian children a nice two hours of entertainment, and hopefully some learning, too. Fortunately, we were warned that something similar to this might happen, so I was (sort of) prepared… for this, anyways.