The secondary curriculum review
Having been given an opportunity to visit a school in Ghana with a view to establishing links, teacher Miranda Liardet used that experience to develop curriculum materials in Whitstone School for her learners. A unit of work on Ghanaian poetry is now an established part of the year 8 English curriculum.
Whitstone School is an 11-16 specialist technology school of 800 students, serving the small Somerset market town of Shepton Mallet. The school population is virtually all white.
When Somerset's Global Development in Education unit offered a small group of teachers the opportunity to visit schools in Ghana in order to experience another education system and to establish links, the senior leadership team of Whitstone School supported Miranda Liardet in her application. Before she went she created a personal, social and health education module about everyday life in Ghana, which she presented to year 8 learners.
As a result of this, the learners wrote penfriend letters, together with 'day in the life' pieces for her to take with her. These were used on her visit to Okuapeman Secondary School in Akropong-Akuapem, a state boarding school situated one hour north of the Ghanaian capital Accra.
When she returned she created an English module entitled 'Comparing Ghanaian poetry' for learners in year 8. The aims of the module were for learners to:
At the start of the module learners were asked to think about a special place, its colours, smells, feel, tastes and sounds, and to make a list of each of these sensations. Then, having selected the most memorable of those sensations, they were asked to turn their list into a short poem.
The teacher then introduced the learners to Philip Larkin's Friday Night at the Royal Station Hotel and asked them to compare it with For those in Ussher Fort: from the Beach at Elmina by the Ghanaian poet Vincent Odamtten. Learners considered the poetic devices used by each poet in creating the atmosphere of a place and began to develop their own poems about a place, seeking to use some of the devices discussed to bring more atmosphere and emotion into their work.
They were then introduced to the comparative use of personification in The River by Ted Hughes and Mawu of the Waters by Abena Musia and encouraged to redraft their poems in order to include this technique. Two further Ghanaian poems, Nostalgia by Kofi Anyidoho and Heritage by Naana Banyiwa Horne, were then introduced to show how poets reflect their own culture in their work, and specifically in both of these poems how that culture is affected by the history of colonial oppression and the slave trade.
The teacher then asked learners to further redraft their own poems in order to reflect their culture. The learners gave presentations (using presentation software) to accompany the Ghanaian poems, which clarified the cultural background to each poem. For example, some learners explained that Ussher Fort had been built as a slave fort by the Dutch settlers but was now a maximum security prison where opposition politicians were often incarcerated. Others noted that the Jitterbug had been popular in 1950s America and it owed its origins to Ghanaian dances such as the Bambaya and the Agbadza.
This way of introducing learners from an all-white community to a wider world and, more specifically, to a part of that wider world that has suffered in the past because of the slave trade and is suffering now because of the unfair trading practices of rich nations, is a highly unusual and yet very effective approach. As well as becoming more globally aware, learners are learning to develop their reading and writing skills in quite specific ways while learning about and from the literature of another culture.
The views of some of those learners are indicative of the learning that has taken place:
'The one poem that really inspired me was For those in Ussher Fort: from the Beach at Elmina, because of its symbolic use of animals, eg "If only the python would swallow me whole." I thought that this quote was very effective because of the animal described. When you think of a python you think of terror and you would really have to be having a rotten time if you wanted to die such a horrible death.'
James
'I particularly enjoyed the poem Heritage. It's definitely the poem that inspired me to write mine. The three stanzas are brilliant and I believe my four stanzas are good too. I liked Heritage so much I called my poem Heritage to remind me of it.'
Connie
'My penfriend is called Samira. She's got two sisters and two dogs. She's fifteen years old and she's doing business studies and she sounds really nice. I'm really looking forward to meeting her. I'm going to be on a stall at 'collect day' selling cakes, making beads and face painting to raise money for our trip to Ghana.'
Georgina
'It makes you realise how we live such selfish lives and how we can help by telling other people about the poverty in other countries. I can never understand how we can keep them in debt. It's wrong. We should cancel the debt. It's wrong.'
Hannah
'I think that personally I would like to visit Ghana, but not just for a good tan, but curiosity about such a great and happy place that has been smote so bad by poverty and slavery. Also this country has created the world's most inspirational pieces of cultural poetry. This country has more secrets to reveal.'
James
'I worked as a youth worker in Birmingham for five years, but since teaching in a small, rural and predominately white town in Somerset I have sometimes felt deprived of the multi-cultural society I was once used to. Extending the global dimension within our school has been a way of redressing that balance and, I hope, helping our learners understand something of the real world.
'My aim was that, by studying poems from British and Ghanaian writers, learners would appreciate the similarities that exist - for example, when writing about the river, both Ted Hughes and Abena Busia evoke the spiritual nature of the water, personifying its grace and power. At the same time I wanted the learners to discover the diverse nature of this poetry and how understanding the historical and cultural context can bring the poems alive, opening up a whole new world.
'I think what has thrilled me most is how some of the learners have been really inspired by the module, not only inspired to write poetry, but also to get involved in our link club and apply to be part of the exchange programme. If they can gain even an ounce of our nations' interdependence through these sorts of modules, then I will feel we have achieved something great.'
Miranda Liardet (English teacher)
When she returned from Ghana, Miranda applied for and received a British Council grant for Fred Jones-Asante to visit Whitstone School for 10 days. Later, again with British Council support, Miranda and four of her colleagues from the school travelled to Ghana to visit Okuapeman Secondary School, while Fred Jones-Asante and three of his colleagues returned to Shepton Mallet in the summer. Currently plans are being made to take a party of 12 learners from Whitstone to Ghana. Whitstone School was awarded a British Council grant of £5,000 to develop curricular links between the two schools.
Developing cross-curricular links
