We have all our new and old students settled in school. Forty returning students and thirty-six new students. Remember we are paying the same money for our returning students who still must pay school fees and tuition. Our new students have all received their chop boxes, trunks, mattresses, sheets, pillows, blankets, buckets and cutlasses. Right now we are in the process of finding out what books they will need for the next three years, and we have bought calculators for all of them. We are in the process of having backpacks made for them featuring our Anansi logo for carrying their books from class to class.
Anansi students receiving their chopboxes and supplies.
Daniel Osie has arrived from Nigeria and has jumped right into the process of making all of the above happen. He has many good ideas for how we can serve our new and old students. It is wonderful to have him here working with Mohammed and Lalinatu. We have conducted quite formal interviews for the hiring of our fourth Anansi manager position. After four Anansi graduate interviews, we decided to offer the job to Innocent Zeye-Mensah.
Innocent was an Anansi student who graduated in 2012. He is a young man of 25 years who was sponsored by Dianne and Kevin Formway. I have not seen him since graduation and it was a delight to catch up on what he has been doing. After graduation he got a job teaching in a private school. Because he comes from a small fishing village in the Volta Region, he had no resources to help him after high school. I asked him what he was doing now and he told me that he is teaching ICT (computer skills) and visual arts, neither of which he studied in high school. When I asked how he had managed to learn what he knows to teach in his present Montessori school, he told me an interesting story. He was teaching in Accra (private schools pay very little to teachers with no credentials) and decided he wanted to learn about computers. He found a good computer school and began hanging around, helping out with sweeping and cleaning and such without asking for pay. As he made friends with the owners in this way, they invited him to sit in on classes. Long story short, he learned it all – Excel, Word, Photoshop etc. And although he does not have a certificate, this particular Montessori school was only interested in what he knew, not a course completion certificate.
Innocent arrived from Accra wearing a suit and tie for his interview and answered all our questions better than anyone had to that point. He is so wonderfully enthusiastic about working with our Anansi students that I’m sure we will be happy we have added him to our Anansi team. Innocent will be the manager at the Anansi Talbot Satellite in Shama. He is coming back this Saturday, has given notice at his school and will be working full time at the beginning of November. His plan is to use his Anansi saved money to go on to the university to study communications.
We have a strong start to this school year, and are excited for what these Anansi changes will bring for our students.
New Anansi students for the 2017-2018 school year.