LIFE-CHANGING: Layne Hackett spent a life-changing three weeks teaching in Ghana on behalf of the Global Volunteers Program and shares her experiences. Schools held 49 children to a room, and students came and went at will from campus during breaks.
Some children carry their desks and chairs to and from school daily. Hackett's school had desks seating three children abreast, a worn-out blackboard and a foam cushion for erasers. Books were scarce: one for every three to four children.
"Class is a free-for-all, sometimes no teachers in the room. Children carry double-edged razors so they can sharpen the pencils they bring from home. Kids play with pencils sticking straight out of their mouths or in their hands. They whack each other when there are disagreements, which is often!
"Caning and switching are regular occurrences. While one teacher is working with the class, it is common for another to shout 'shut up' or to loudly scold the group. Thus [the assistant] is interfering with what the designated teacher is attempting to convey."
A lesson sentence may be repeated in unison 40 times or more; yet the meaning is not explained. "I used the cane as a pointer, which kept it out of the hands of one practice teacher, who used it abundantly," Hackett says of her contribution. She based lessons on fun, not fear.
Her method was interactive: kids gathered stones for weight and balance lessons, played hangman, solved word puzzles, sang for language learning. "My second contribution was in bringing a wildly popular Frisbee that multitudes of kids played with during the break." She was the only adult ever outside with kids during breaks.
"One weekend our team [12 people of divergent ages from all over the U.S.] went to Cape Coast and Elmina, where the two castles in which the slave trade took place are now memorials to that horrid period, a blight on human history." She found herself in tears.
BOOK BUNCH: The AAUW Author's Benefit brought forth a diverse trio: Bo Caldwell, The Distant Land of My Father; Firoozeh Dumas, Funny in Farsi: a Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America; and Los Gatan Diane Dreher, Inner Gardening.
Caldwell's book is the fictionalized story of her uncle, estranged from the rest of the family, but very attached to Caldwell in his later years. A very wealthy man in Shanghai, he lost it all when he was imprisoned first by the Japanese and later by the Communists.
At his death a few years ago, Caldwell, his executor, found 50 typed pages, transcribed from notes written during his imprisonment, and realized she had a gold mine. Caldwell, awarded a Stegner Fellowship, taught fiction writing at Stanford.
Dreher fell in love with Betty Johnson's garden in Los Gatos when she was house-hunting. She's been maintaining and enhancing that garden ever since. Dreher's book is a compendium of personal experiences with a spiritual overtone, plus recipes, history and practical advice.
Gardens and gardening are an extension of God's grace, the key to health and wholeness, she affirms. Dreher is a medieval scholar who teaches at Santa Clara U. and whose books include The Tao of Inner Peace. The word garden means "paradise" in Persian.
Dumas' memoir is laced with humor: She came to this country as a 7-year-old and was confounded that nobody here knew where Iran was. Then, in college, rooming with a woman from Delaware, she realized nobody knew where Delaware was either. With the Iranian Revolution and 9-11 came hatred toward Iranians.
Dumas urged her father to claim Turkish heritage when applying for a bank loan. That hatred is fed by ignorance about the Middle East, Dumas laments. Her book stresses the universality of peoples, despite their differences.
Written for her children, the memoir received so much praise, she began to try to market it, carrying copies of the 70-page manuscript with her, passing it off to anyone with any connections.
No luck, until one day she returned $300 she found at an ATM machine. A Los Angeles agent somehow heard about the return, asked for her manuscript and, shortly thereafter, sold it.
VALENTINE PROJECT: Parent Marit McDonald combined craftsmen at either end of the age spectrum—kindergartners at the Learning Company and seniors at Live Oak—to create valentines one recent morning. The valentines were then taken to residents at Emmanual Convalescent Hospital.
The project linked the wisdom and patience of age with the enthusiasm and imagination of 5-year-olds. Debi Kranefuss heads the Live Oak program.
BIRTH OF DEATH INDUSTRY: "Ashes to Ashes: The Birth of the Death Industry, 18501920," is the new exhibit at the LG History Museum. The exhibit examines Victorian memorials and traces the transition from in-home rites to a modern profession. The display is up until May 2.
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By Mary Ann Cook