Getting there...

Been a hectic week, but a good one. After spending November feeling a bit ineffective here, the classroom management workshop has really been a bit of a springboard and I'm really feeling like I might be making some kind of a lasting difference now. I can't tell if the strategies for in the classroom are being used, but the system of teachers observing each other has started and is going well, and there is at least some supervision of the kids at break times now (although a bit haphazardly).

The main thing I'm trying to get sorted at the moment is a system of break time detentions. They were agreed at the workshop and are quite important, because everything else was about controlling the class whereas the detentions were the only feasible alternative punishment for corporal punishment. The teachers weren't taking any initiative though for using the system and nothing was happening; so on Wednesday when there were about 40 kids late for school and the teachers turned to me to ask what to do now (they do that quite often now. I don't know whether it's healthy) I said we'd put them in break time detention.

It was a bit manic rounding them up and getting them into detention - I was doing most of it, supported by the principal and a teacher - but eventually we got them in and settled, and it worked really well. We did another detention yesterday, this time getting names off teachers of kids who'd misbehaved in lessons too. The principal is pretty impressed and grateful that I've followed up on the workshop by actually enforcing the policies - but my worry is that they're going to have to continue without me. The other international volunteers are keen to carry them on when I've left, and hopefully the teachers will see the benefits of the detentions and be prepared to put the effort in to run them themselves.

I didn't realise till yesterday that corporal punishment has only been banned for less than a year; and someone told me that in other schools in Ghana, kids get hit for giving wrong answers - so actually the teachers aren't doing too bad at changing their practice. They just get frustrated and don't know any alternatives. Hopefully the detentions will give them one.