A Day In The Life
October 18th, 2009The universe has a sense of humor.
There are 49 periods in a week on our school’s timetable. I was teaching 10 of them.
God saw this, said “What? NO! That Dobbe kid isn’t working hard enough! Give him the most out of any teacher on the staff!”
And thus, I went from teaching 10 periods a week to teaching 40 periods a week.
Joy of joys.
Luckily, that time table had some problems, and (surprise, surprise) because I was in charge of the timetable software, I cut myself down to 32 periods a week by introducing the concept of study hall. American culture for the win.
I actually don’t mind teaching 32 periods a week. It’s enough to keep me busy, and not so much that I can’t get out and do stuff like eat or brush my teeth. It’s nice.
So, I was going to talk to y’all about my daily routine. Having had one for almost a month now (it’s nice not to travel all the time), I’d like to spend some time going over what exactly it is I do during the day.
5:30am – Wake up. Get out of bed (run a comb across my head…). No stairs, so that’s it for obscure song references. Make the bed, throw on some trousers, stumble into the kitchen and start boiling water for tea. Let the cat in, feed her something, and turn on the radio. Once the water has boiled, I make tea, scrounge up some breakfast, and read a bit while waiting for the tea to kick in.
6:15am – Make self presentable: wash face, brush teeth, shave, finish dressing. Listen to the BBC and go over my agenda for the day. Tidy up the house, if time permits and I feel industrious.
~7:00am – Head for school. Morning assembly starts around this time. Required for masters on duty and students, otherwise optional. I will observe if I have nothing pressing to do. Otherwise, I run minor errands, print my lesson notes, and open the computer lab.
7:30am – The timetable rolls into action. If I’m scheduled for class, I teach. If the students have practicals, they come to the lab. Otherwise, I work on lesson notes/projects, fix hardware problems, run errands, or just sit and talk to people.
~11:30am – Lunch! If it’s a busy day, I go buy kenkey and beans (or send a student to bring it back for me) and eat at school. Otherwise, I go home, warm up some leftovers, tune into the BBC or Voice of Nigeria, and eat. The cat usually insists on covering me in cat hair while I do this.
~12:30pm – Head back to school. Wash, rinse, repeat.
3:10pm – School closes for the day. If there’s staff class or Open Lab scheduled, I stay and take care of that. Otherwise, I go home, exercise, do chores, go into the market, or visit people. If it’s been an especially mentally taxing day (read: Oh, by the way, we need you to spend 4 hours programming the timetable software. And the power keeps going out. Have fun!) I do nice, mindless chores, such as dishes, sweeping the floor, etc.
~6:00pm – The sun is down, so I start cooking dinner. More house chores to the dulcet tones of the BBC. If it’s lights out, I light candles and kerosene lamps.
6:30pm – Dinner is served. Cat eats hers, then comes and bugs me while I eat mine, eventually falling asleep and/or bathing in my lap. I usually read *and* listen to the radio while eating. (Attention Deficit Disorder: Hey, this book is really interesting, and so is that story on the radio. By the way, that car needs a new muffler and your fly is unzipped. Where am I?)
7:30pm – Bath time. Listen to the news, brush teeth, floss, do stuff.
8:00pm – Read, write, plan, review the day, play the harmonica, watch a movie, or something along those lines. I really try to empty my head during this time, which helps me sleep better. I’ve also been trying to meditate more often, which helps with the ADD and the sleeping.
10:00pm – Cat goes out, and I go to bed.
That’s the basic gist of it, anyway. On Saturdays and Sundays, replace “school” with “whatever I feel like doing” and/or various and sundry chores like laundry and dusting. There’s also a nice long bike ride in there somewhere as well.
Sunday mornings are my church service, which consists of me getting up and going for a nice 10km walk. I can hear all of the local churches from my house, which is impressive because the closest one is 1/2 a mile away. That kind of hearing damage doesn’t interest me, and I can’t really understand it that well because it’s in Twi. So, I go play Unitarian for awhile. God’s just as much out there as he is in any building.
Anyway, that’s a day in my life. Until next time, stay classy.
November 2nd, 2009 at 3:11 am
Hello Grant Dobbe,
I enjoy reading your posts,
and always have since i discovered them at the time of the Tain elections.
Now you have described your day, and it seems like a meaningless life, filled with teaching and mindless chores,
so i assume you like teaching and find it fullfilling.
I wonder whether the young people that you teach will find a job for which they need this education ? What are their chances of that ? Would you be able to create a business venture that could employ them ?
I hear there is an increase in agriculture mechanization in the Savannah area. I heard that farmers around Tamale are happy with this and want more of it. Tain is also Savannah, albeit borderline, so i wonder if any of that is happening where you live too.
Also, since you are in charge of the timetable, why not simply assign all 49 periods to yourself and give these dozens of other teachers the rest of the year off ?
Your town is located on the Sampa – Wenchi highway iirc,
how does that influence it ? Are there road-related businesses or is it just a farmers town that happens to be located near the road ?
Questions, questions, …
Well, am just an inquisitive person who is interested in Ghana,
and i hope you don’t mind.
Thanks for brightening my day with your posts.
– Siward
December 13th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Hey Grant! Good to read your blog, hope all is well!
December 22nd, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Siward,
Good to hear from you. Sorry about the delay in replying to you.
Life in rural Ghana is all about routine. I do vary it from time to time, of course — going to a spot for a minerals with my colleagues, bike rides in the bush, buying red-red or kenkey for dinner instead of cooking — but when you have to be in school all week, spontaneity is unfortunately rare. My main opportunities to depart from the beaten path come during the term breaks, when I travel, bike, work on projects, and so on. That’s one of the main differences between the Education PCVs and the PCVs working in other sectors; Ed PCVs live in a state of punctuated equilibrium, whereas Omnibus (the other sectors) have a bit more fluidity in their schedules.
Speaking of schedules, I think there’s a little confusion in how a school timetable works here. The time table isn’t structured to have 47 periods total; it’s 47 periods per class per week. Form 2 and Form 3 are both divided into 4 classes, to whom I teach 4 periods of ICT per week. It doesn’t seem like a lot at first, but it means that most of my day is taken up by teaching, and I have very little time left over to prepare lesson plans and mark papers.
Tain is borderline savannah, though my village seems to straddle the savannah and the forest belt. Mechanized farming is making inroads to my area, but so far, it’s pretty limited; I can count all of the tractors in my town on one finger. The farmers make it work, but everybody seems to agree that another tractor would be necessary to get the most out of the Agric. Mech. program.
My town is actually located in a triangle between Sampa, Techiman, and Berekum, with most of our road traffic going through Berekum except for market day. The Sampa Road is about 2 hours drive from my town. Therefore, we don’t have a lot of road-side business; we’re more of a rural town surrounded by farms.
Thanks for the questions!
January 25th, 2010 at 10:46 pm
Hi again, Grant Dobbe,
thanks for your reply !
Judging by some pictures in your gallery, i’lld say that with form 2 and 3, you mean second and third year of SSS ?
Together with 4 classes per year that would mean that your town has not less than circa 6000 inhabitants.
And it is on the Berekum side of Tain,
and (surprisingly) has electricity.
So i’m guessing your town is Seikwa (although that has 10,000 inhabitants).
(i learned all these from ghanadistricts.com (wikipedia doesn’t have much on Tain)
and also used a higher resolution version of the map on my website ;
if you would like to have a copy, please feel free to email me)
If you are in Seikwa,
i guess one of main development problems would be that there are no perennial rivers,
and no obvious opportunities for dams,
although farms in the river valleys would be better off in that respect,
especially the ones near river Tain (which is perennial).
So Seikwa would be a service town (given it’s electricity and relatively good roads)
and would be usefull for fertilizer/pesticide sales, harvest storage, market,
JSS/SSS, agricultural extension service, healthcare, etc.
Agriculture would need to be profitable before services to it become profitable.
I think that ‘not forest belt’ means that rainfall minus runoff is not enough to support evaporation of forest,
but in many places water is stored undergound, so there are still many trees.
With only 4 classes per yeargroup, your classes would be quite large, i think.
I don’t understand why you spend time on grading test papers.
Tests ofcourse are usefull, but papers ?!?
Aren’t you supposed to do everything with ICT ?
Do you use data of local economy to make your pupils interested in using spreadsheets etc ?
What OS do you teach your pupils ? Linux or Windows ?
Do they allow you to make your own mistakes, or can they not afford that ?
I gather that of the 12 teachers in your SSS, 5 would not be qualified teachers ;
i wonder what that really means ?
I also wrote a small software, which is called canvas and executes drawcommands ;
it can be found on my site (and i have put an RFP bug for it in Debian’s bug tracking system).
Maybe you would like it.
Don’t become a monk in later life !
Start your own pizza place instead ! (yummy