One Step at a Time...

Praise God for the small, but encouraging, bits of progress made lately. In terms of math, the kids here really struggle. Most of them failed math last year and still struggle with the basic facts-- even in 6th grade. This makes learning higher level concepts pretty difficult. Part of my job here is to train the teachers and coach them on how to teach math more effectively. I was also hoping to start some type of math club after school to help the students catch up on important concepts they've missed through games and other activities. However, upon coming here and realizing the extreme need for learning math, I've been almost paralyzed. It's as if the need is too great and every idea I come up with seems to small-- too insignificant-- to make any difference at all. However, I know you can't get anywhere by standing still, so on Saturday I rounded up some of the P5 & P6 kids and had my first math club. I'd say it was a success, considering I said we'd meet for maybe 45 minutes and after 2 hours, I had to kick the kids out! They wanted more! So, I'm still throwing around ideas on how to best serve all of the students and how to use my time most effectively with the clubs. It looks like I may have different grade levels meet after school on certain days.

I was also encouraged by a one-on-one tutoring session with a third grade boy today. His confidence and self-esteem is quite low, partially because he's getting teased by classmates for doing poorly in math. Today I did some informal assessment to see where he's at and then had a short tutoring session. It was encouraging to hear that he had told Papa Jim that he really enjoyed that time and even learned something! We have a long ways to go, but I'm praying that God will not only use this opportunity to improve his math skills but also to improve his confidence. He's such a sweet boy, and it's encouraging to me to think that even if I make a difference for one child while I'm here, my time here was well spent.

I'm learning-- maybe slowly-- that life (especially in Ghana) is best taken one day at a time...by putting one foot in front of the other. :)