What you Ghana do?

In the last forty-eight hours we have taken yet another step, in yet another new direction. This time the footing is less sure, but the possibilities beneath our feet feel firm and true! Two short nights ago, I was offered a position as principal (and English language arts teacher) at a new international school in Ghana. We accepted. We are moving to Ghana. I will be the principal in a Canadian preparatory school on Africa's Gold Coast. Pinch me...no wait, don't!

To say that this is life changing, or that it represents a real risk, would not be entirely true or fair. The decision took about three minutes to make because it is--to steal a line from a Matthew Perry movie, uttered to Salma Hayek atop the Hoover Dam (Is there a prettier, more romantic spot on the planet? I think not...but I digress.)--everything we never knew we always wanted. Even the kids were easily sold on this, mainly because our current context doesn't feel like home. Also, I have been on about multicultural and/or anti-racist education (and about forty-three other social justice issues, so eye-rollers and nay-sayers beware!) a lot throughout my nine year career and Africa seems to pop up a fair bit. Simply put, I couldn't stand the smell of my own ignorance, or the sight of my own privilege, any longer. Since I am essentially a kinesthetic learner, book learnin' just wasn't cutting it.

I will finish my M.Ed. this summer and I feel as though I need a little (or in this case, a lot) of time and distance from the Canadian system right now. In truth, my studies made me more than a mite angry with my profession. Change--even when research, data, and theory are conclusive--is painfully slow in coming in education, if it rears its necessary head at all. I have spent a lot of time studying change through agency, through creative, visionary leadership, through critical literacy, through personal and professional reflection, through teacher supervision, through learning communities, through improving student achievement, through culture-building, through policy-making and through innovative curriculum, to name but a few of the many approaches and stances relating to change. I have come to a frighteningly simple conclusion regarding the generally resistant, apathetic and/or hostile attitudes that educators seem to hold for change (which is really, another word for learning): we are free not to change. It is likely hard to believe that my conclusion is, as a "good" Canadian, that freedom is part of the disease, rather than the cure (to paraphrase Coldplay, and others). I have heard many educators use the quote by Ghandi around being the change that you wish to see in the world. If teachers aren't into learning--personally and professionally--what are we "being" in our world and in our classrooms? (Narrator carefully steps down from soapbox and gently nudges it aside, before once again turning to the listeners.)

I have come to dream of a teaching profession that behaves in the same manner as professional artists do. What artist doesn't dream that the next thing that they create will be their best yet? What if teachers taught this way? What if we were forever learning, reflecting, growing, working and creating toward our best lesson yet? How many teachers end at the top of their profession? Time and distance, I said. That I may search for the heart, and the art, of teaching. When I find it (again?!), you, dear readers, shall be the first to know.

Oh, and what does akwaaba mean? It means "welcome" in Ghana and if you made it this far, then welcome to my blog, welcome to my Ghana, and best of all, welcome to my learning.

Yours in learning,
Ryan Land