On the first day of the year we were off to head back to our favorite country in the world, Ghana. Both of us had previously been in Ghana in June of 2008 for two weeks, and fell so in love with the country and its people that we just had to return. We wanted a reason to go back, and to work with Dahin Sheli Primary School. We decided to focus our Senior Graduation Project on education differences between Ghana and America. We would spend three weeks as teaching assistants at Dhain Sheli Primary School in Tamale, Ghana.

When we arrived in Tamale, we were greeted by our old friends and welcomed right back into our second home. We were immediately embraced by everyone at Sister Cities Tamale and so excited to finally be back.

The purpose of our trip was to work as teaching assistants at Dahin Sheli Primary School. We would teach and observe classes to figure out the differences between the American and Ghanaian education system. We wanted to do this because during our June trip we had fallen in love with the school and its children. Our goal for our trip was also to develop a connection between Dahin Sheli’s teachers and students and our own. We brought with us over one hundred letters from students at our school and were able to collect even more from their students to bring home.

Over the course of this school year we have established a pen pal relationship between the lower and middle school students at both schools. We also collected several e-mail addresses from teachers there to bring to our teachers so they could communicate via e-mail about different teaching strategies and techniques. Not only did we get a lot out of our trip, but we were also able to extend its effects to both schools through the lasting exchanges created through email. Our hope is that in the future teachers and students from our sister schools will be able to come here and continue the exchange of knowledge.