Frustrations about School

It's ridiculous. The kids are in school for 4 45 minute periods
from 2nd to 6th grade, and from 7:30 to 12 or 12:30 from "ABC"
(before K1) through 1st grade. Classes are huge, especially for
younger kids, which makes it impossible for the teacher to taylor
a lesson or help kids who are having trouble. And from the ground
up, lessons are drilled and not explained. The K kids can copy
from the board any letter or sentence or number but some don't
know what the actual letters are. At the level I'm teaching,
teachers just go from thing to thing, with memorization and
drilling and again, no guarantee (or even no good chance) of
comprehension for the majority of kids. I was just so frustrated
today. Mr. Johnson seems to be an especially poor example, but
so many of the teachers have scattered lesson plans, no plan
for the whole year (and if Mr. Johnson is any indication, no
discernable record of what they've done). There's hours-long
exams, even for K-1, mandated by the Ghanaian government, that
CBW is trying to adhere to as well as the curriculum (most teachers
get through half, or random parts, or some get through all of
it over and over but the kids still don't know the stuff, according
to various conversations with other volunteers). CBW is trying
to get Ghana to recognize it as a school, which would give both
credibility and additional funding, so there's all sorts of hoops
to jump through there, some of which are productive (certified
teachers, I think) but some are stupid - like we have to have a
school Ode for Ghana to recognize us. The lyrics are rather
interesting, though, I'll try to copy them down and post them.

Anyway, the problem is so deep-seeded, it's in the teachers, the
class sizes, the disorderly environment (which, thank god, will
improve next year when they move to the new school with actual
seperate classrooms!). I want to do a workshop on long-term
accademic planning. Mr. Johnson is just so unresponsive when I
try to ask him what he's done or advise him to make a list of it.
It doesn't make school very enjoyable, in fact it makes it a bit
miserable, but then there are the moments where I can make the
kids understand something so I feel good. However, me teaching
30 kids here how to do mixed number to improper fraction
conversions is not really going to be much help in the long run.
I have really mixed feelings - the schools just need such an
overhaul, yet the older kids can read and do some math despite
the seemingly impossible younger classes where kids don't know
what 10 is after it's been gone over and over and over.

Anyway, I'll post more tomorrow when I go into Accra - one of
the better teachers came by last night and told us basically the
story of what happened to him in Liberia and how he got here, as
well as his struggles here. I'm just drained from school today
and struggling with Mr. Johsnon about the end-of-the-year test
and the curriculum.