Principios fundamentales para aplicaciones de eHealth

Grace lives in a rural area close to the capital with her husband and her two teenage children. Grace was born in Accra but had her secondary school in the Eastern region of Ghana because her mother wanted her to learn the local language of her origins. According to Grace, schooling away from her parents made her become aware of the importance of language and culture. To her, the Ghanaian culture is very rich and it makes her proud to be a Ghanaian so she finds it difficult to understand why the young ones are looking up to other foreign cultures.

Grace was introduced to me by one of the contacts I had made from the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT). Grace invited me to her house and we agreed to have all our meetings there because she said she was supervising workers in the house. Grace said she always wanted to become a teacher because she believed it was a good job for women. After completing secondary school, she enrolled in a training college in the Ashanti region but, on completion, she was posted to a rural town in the Greater Accra region. Grace said that living in the rural area was a big challenge because she had always lived in big towns. She was appointed to teach in Class Two and though she did not speak the local language she made an effort to learn it because she felt it was the right thing to do.

After teaching Class Two for three years, she decided to move to upper grade because of the workload. She later went to the university to do a course in Adult Education. Presently, she is teaching English language and Home Economics in a school close to her house. Grace is of the opinion that the teachers’ union should be doing more for teachers and they should take a more active role in policy formulation process by being the voice of teachers. She supports the use of local language as the medium of instruction in early grades. The following vignette presents a few highlights of what she said in her interviews.

103 My name is Grace and I am a teacher at the local Junior Secondary School. I am married with two children. I was born in Accra where I had my elementary school. But my mother sent me to do my secondary school education in the Eastern region so that I can learn to speak my local language well. From there I went to training college in 1989 for three years and obtained Certificate ‘A’. After my training, I was posted to teach in the Ga rural area and I taught Class 2 for three years. I had a change of class and later taught Class 4. I am now teaching in the Junior High School (JHS) because with the lower primary there is a lot of work and you need to prepare your lesson notes for all the subjects you teach and you have to make sure you give exercises on every lesson and mark them, but with the JHS, I have to prepare notes for only the subjects I teach because I am a subject teacher so I prepare my lessons notes for the classes that I teach so I don’t have to prepare lesson notes during weekend and I can also mark the exercises later in the staff room. In 2000, I went to the University to study Adult Education for three years on adult literacy learning.

I really like my training and the teaching practice because it brought me a great joy. I quite remember an incident in the school when the children were sad because the teaching practice had come to an end after three weeks and they would not let us to leave. That incident created a certain passion for us, especially me, I had that passion and I wished I could remain there and teach there but that was not possible because it was only for the teaching experience. As a teacher, I think it is important for me to use the mother tongue, I see the Ghanaian language as culturally dynamic because it helps people to socialise with each other… I believe teaching in mother tongue will make children learn faster because they understand what I teach them and they are able to answer my questions well.

Teaching is very interesting if you want to enjoy it. It depends on the individual, you will enjoy it if you like it and if you don’t like it you will never enjoy it. So for me what I do is, I bring myself to do whatever I have to do and I try to do it to the best of my ability. I know how to prepare my lesson notes so I do not wait for anyone to tell me what to do. I know how to teach my class, how to mark my exercises so it depends on the individual. Me, I teach and I enjoy it and when my children understand what I teach I feel very happy.

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