Attending a Professional Development Session and getting elected as a leader of leaders

As part of our Lead for Ghana fellowship package, we’ll hold professional development sessions through out the 2-year period. This weekend was the first professional development (PD) session my cohort had.

The session took place all through out Ghana on different days and at different venues depending on the location you’re posted. Fo us fellows that were posted in the North, our PD session was Saturday at Mariam Hotel.

Since the session was slated to start at 8am, a lot of people had to leave from very far places to camp in Tamale a night before the session. For some people (myself included) traveling from their schools to Tamale was about a 3 hour journey. That wouldn’t be a problem except that cars in those towns don’t leave around 5am to allow you be in Tamale by 8.

Because of all the complications I just explained, a few people showed up late. Not everyone could camp in Tamale an eve to the occasion.

Anyways, I was there around 8:30am, by which time everybody else already had breakfast. So I had to do a solo breakfast. Well maybe not so solo cs I met one other person there. I couldn’t take my time to enjoy it cos I didn’t want to miss more of the session than I already did. So I hurried down to get some coffee and joined my colleagues in about 15 minutes.

When I came in, I complained about the AC about 30 minutes in and instead of our Leadership Growth Manager turning the AC off, she gave me a scarf to cover myself with.😂

You should’ve heard the comments people were passing. Some people called me a Taliban and others were talking about how “You want to go to Canada but simple AC you can’t handle”😂

I enjoyed the PD a lot. We extensively discussed professional development as applied to us as Lead for Ghana fellows, and to the students we nurture in our classrooms. We also talked about vision setting, goal planning, and tracking classroom improvements.

I was reminded of Lead for Ghana’s targeted student outcomes - AMA (Academic excellence, Mindset Growth, Access to Opportunities). As Lead for Ghana fellows, we’re not just interested in improving student academics, but nurturing their mindsets, challenging them to unlearn and relearn things they’ve been taught to believe. We’re also dedicated to guiding students in navigating their options post-high school to pursue higher education, or leverage available opportunities to make self and societal impact.

At the end of the session, we nominated and voted for our Lead for Ghana Regional Representatives. This election was the most fun part of the session if I’m being honest.

We were not pre-informed we’ll be electing our regional representatives at the session, so no one was prepared. Still, we nominated 5 candidates, gave each candidate 4 minutes to convince us they were the best person person for the role.

After our “speeches”, one of the candidates shit his pants and decided to step down, leaving 4 of us to proceed to balloting.

The first round ended in a tie between yours truly and my sister-in-law😂. I’m not even joking. My sister-in-law and I both happened to have been a part of the 2023 cohort and even more random is the fact that our schools are just one town apart.

Anyways, because of the tie, naturally we had to have a runoff voting. Again, each candidate (the two of us now) was given 2 minutes to make a stronger case on why they think they’re better suited for this role. I was thinking I’d lose this round because I thought all the girls (about 9 or so) would troop to the lady’s side along with a few crushes of my sil’s among the guys.😂

After our speeches and politics, it seems I said something that convinced people I was the chosen one cos my sister-in-law got only one extra vote against 5 more that I got! But we decided unanimously that she should be my assistant, so no bad blood.

The two guys on the left hand of the lady in the middle, Lucky(our leadership growth manager) are the elected reps of the Savannah region amd his assistant on the far end as well. With me and my sil on the right of Lucky. I was trying real hard not to laugh cos they were making fun of her and she almost cried.😂

I have a video of the election process, so maybe I’ll upload it sometime one of these days.

After everything, we had lunch, did some photo sessions and left. As always, I had to be the photographer and so didn’t get any good pictures myself. The curse of an iPhone.😂

Anyways, I’m excited to have been given that opportunity to serve. I promised them I’d do my best, but I intend on doing better. I started doing my job on Monday (yesterday). We had a different session yesterday at a different place and I’ll be sharing about that in my next post.