Adams: A Community Leader Embraces Teaching to Change Children’s Lives
The classroom where Adams teaches in Mossipanin, a rural community in southern Ghana, is surrounded by small farms and rough roads.
Hours from Ghana’s second-largest city, Kumasi, most of Mossipanin’s residents are farmers. Each day, they walk to their plots of land to grow yams, corn, and beans to feed their families and sell at the market.
Adams came to Mossipanin years ago from a nearby town to complete his national service for the government. Adams was happy and, when his service finished, decided he would stay.
“I started helping the community as their secretary,” Adams says. As secretary, Adams keeps the community up to date on what is happening, takes notes for villagers who do not know how to read, and generally serves as a link between Mossipanin and the rest of the world. When Luminos began recruiting young adults to train as teachers for our new Ghana program, Mossipanin’s village chief immediately put Adams’ name forward.
The rural community of Mossipanin in the Ashanti region of Ghana.
The view from the village chief’s home in Mossipanin.
Students and teachers alike enjoy playing soccer during breaks from class.
The community of Mossipanin in southern Ghana.
A yam farm tended by Mossipanin community members. Each mound contains a single yam.
Luminos signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Ghana’s national Ministry of Education in the autumn of 2021 and officially launched our Ghana program serving 1,500 formerly out-of-school children in the Ashanti region where Mossipanin is located.
With the second highest number of primary-school-aged out-of-school children in Ghana and little support historically, Ashanti has a deep need for a catch-up education program to help children build foundational reading, writing, and math skills. Data shows that the majority of children entered Luminos’ program unable to read a single word.
In Adams’ classroom today, students eagerly join in learning songs and dances, reading and writing, and solving basic math equations.
Adams has just as much fun as his students while leading short energizing activities like this one where students sing and dance.
“I love mathematics,” says Adams, noting that he always strives to involve his students in learning activities and the teaching process itself to help them internalize lessons. His enthusiasm is infectious: students from Adams’ class usually name math as their favorite subject!
“My favorite thing to learn is math,” says eight-year-old Bele, one of Adams’ students. “I feel happy when I study it. I especially like doing subtraction!”
Bele loves when Adams leads the class in an activity called Number Line where Adams draws a line on the floor in chalk, labeling it with numbers such as 1-10. Students practice addition and subtraction by taking steps forward and backward on the line.
Adams cares deeply about his students—Bele shares that Adams once made the long journey into town to buy sandals for him when he had none.
Bele, one of Adams’ students, loves math.
“Teaching is my passion! I like teaching because I want to make a better future.”
Adams, Luminos teacher in Ghana
Adams has big dreams for his students and himself. He says, “I want my students to become a better person than I. Education is the key to success in everything. I would be proud seeing my kids having a better future; a better life through education.”
Adams’ love for learning extends beyond his classroom: he is pursuing a degree in Business Management in Education in Kumasi and one day hopes to get his master’s degree.
Today, Adams proudly declares, “Teaching is my passion! I like teaching because I want to make a better future.”
With teachers like Adams, the future for Ghana’s children is bright.
Adams (bottom left) leads his students in a song-and-dance activity to get them energized and ready to focus on the next lesson.
“I want my students to become a better person than I. Education is the key to success in everything. I would be proud seeing my kids having a better future; a better life through education.”
Adams, Luminos teacher in Ghana
Read this story and others from our various country programs in our 2021 Annual Report!
To learn more about our Ghana program, click here.
Photo credit for this story: Mara Chan
