Peace Corps Ghana Literacy Program
Motivation
When I started teaching at Garadima JHS, I realized that most of the students were either completely or functionally illiterate, a situation that was detrimental to end-of-term pass rates and that made 90% of the school work quite pointless as it required reading and/or writing. I searched online and in the Peace Corps’ SEAS (Supporting Education Across Sectors, the education working group) drive and found the resources available were either predicated upon the use of technology that was not available in this rural village or hard copies with outdated, culturally irrelevant storybook lessons from England.
Core Program
Overview
I decided to teach the students to read with my own program, first by splitting willing participants into five levels, level 1 being completely illiterate and level 5 having age-appropriate literacy skills, based on their results on the literacy test I wrote. I met once a week with each level after school, writing many copies of short stories for them to read, drawing pictures for letter association, and was, in large part, unsuccessful. The group sizes were so large that it was impossible to provide individual focus, and most students eventually dropped out, feeling overwhelmed. With fewer students participating, it became easier for me to observe the effectiveness of different methods and adjust accordingly. I started typing my lesson plans and stories instead of writing them as my program solidified, biking 30 miles round trip on an unforgiving clay road to print copies. By the end of the school year in 2018, I had a comprehensive program that aimed at accelerating English learning for illiterate to mostly literate teens to accommodate the students’ inabilities with the learning level required of their grade.
That summer, I was invited to take part in the SEAS working group (mentioned above) as the Literacy Leader, responsible for assisting any interested Peace Corps Volunteers in Ghana with improving literacy levels in their communities. Eventually, I became co-president of SEAS and later the sole president. In the meantime, I further developed my literacy program as I continued lessons at my school and made it available to the entire Peace Corps community in Ghana, and today, implementing this literacy development program in communities is taught to volunteers-in-training.
Program Includes:
• Literacy placement test and guidelines to testing, literacy development in general and for program implementation
• General guidelines for teaching each level included in their respective folders
• Lesson plans: 20 for each of the levels 1-3, 15 for level 4, and only a lesson plan formula for level 5
• Student printouts (workbook) for each level that students follow with the corresponding lesson
• “Word tracks” for each level to track which words the students should know depending on the lesson
Example
I have included an example of a level 3 lesson plan with its story, which I have chosen at random. The informal writing of the lesson plan itself is a result of having written 75 lesson plans myself while teaching JHS fulltime, leading after-school lessons and clubs and managing community development projects. Thus while I worked very hard on the stories themselves for the students’ experience, I did not overly exert myself in polishing the writing within the plans themselves.
m15-lit example.docxResults
At my school, students’ learning capacity and thus their end-of-term pass rates have improved significantly due to improved literacy levels, assessed by comparing changes in students who participated in the program with those who did not. Other schools have reported similar results in their students as well as in adult learners.
Community Involvment
Mural
With some artistically inclined students, I painted a mural on the pre-K building in Garadima with letters and foods that started with the letter sounds. The best part was watching illiterate adults and children alike walking by and sounding out letter sounds based on the pictures.
Computer Lab & Library
I converted an empty classroom into a computer lab and library after fundraising, building shelves and tables with students using boards leftover from a desk construction project, and traveling to Accra with two other teachers to purchase supplies. This way, students can apply what they learn in IT class and actually read books to improve their literacy.
Cross-Cultural Exchange
US/Ghana Penpals
To provide an exciting reason to improve literacy, I set up a penpal exchange between literacy program participants and a 7th grade classroom in Ohio, as well as a similar setup at the elementary school. Students had a blast learning about life in the US and having an American friend to write to. It also provided a valuable opportunity to share insight into Ghanaian culture with a US classroom.
