Our First Guest-Taught Workshop

Kasadwini Atenaeɛ, our language arts center in the village of Asisiriwa, Ghana, has had an operational classroom with a full-time teacher named Mary since 2020, but we always had the dream of inviting guest teachers from outside Asisiriwa to build on the skills and add new perspectives for the students there. A few things had to fall into place first, one of which was getting through the Covid-19 pandemic. Next, we needed a place in the village for guests to stay. Fortunately, the community of Asisiriwa donated a room in the old teachers’ quarters to Untold International. We cleaned it up, painted it, and got some basic furnishings and amenities for it.

Next, we needed guests to invite, people passionate enough about language arts to take a week out of their life to stay in a rural village they’d never heard of, and with enough expertise to make it worth everyone’s time. Fortunately, I’d gotten connected with Kwame Brenya, an independent Twi language teacher and award-winning poet who writes in Twi. Kwame is passionate about African epistemologies, Ghanaian traditions, and advancing the local languages. He happily agreed to be the first guest teacher at Kasadwini Atenaeɛ and to lead a week-long workshop on Twi poetry-writing in April of last year. He also agreed to teach every normal class at Kasadwini Atenaeɛ that week, meaning that he taught every student in Asisiriwa some basics of Twi poetry at least once.

Structure of the Twi poetry workshop

Kwame came with an artist friend of his named Megborna who handled media equipment they brought along. Mary advertised the workshop among the students in advance, and 25 of the most avid JHS and upper primary students (grades 4-9) registered to voluntarily attend the 3-hour workshop every afternoon after school for five consecutive days. Mary also prepared snacks for the participants every day—bread and a local drink called sobolo made from hibiscus, pineapple, and ginger.

Introducing the students to Twi poetry via proverbs and idioms

The first day of the workshop focused on Twi proverbs and idioms, short yet profound verbal arts in Akan culture. These were morsels that gave the students easy access to the poetic realm—they were familiar with them, able to provide some themselves, and yet were hungry for more. As it does in many linguistic contexts, figurative language served as the bridge between everyday discourse and creative literature. This immersed the students in their own indigenous traditions and made them feel capable of some kind of composition.

The workshop encouraged creative writing and performance by students

By day 3 of the workshop, the students were instructed in how to write their own Twi poems. By day 4, they were reading their poems aloud at the front of the room and into recording equipment Kwame and Megborna had brought with them. On day 5, the students listened to some of the poems played back for the room, electronically paired with music that traditionally accompanies poetic performances, and gave constructive criticism to the poets.

By the end of the week-long workshop, the 25 students who originally had no idea how to write poetry had written their own poems and had performed them in front of their peers. They came slowly at first, with many of them either missing the first day or coming late. By day 3, they were all avidly coming on time, ready to absorb the lessons and Kwame’s infectious, performative personality. By day 5, students who hadn’t registered for the workshop were standing outside with their faces pressed near the doors and windows to watch the activities going on inside. Even adults who had expressed doubts about these strange outsiders coming to their village to do a workshop were asking, “Where is our workshop?” by the end of the week.

A successful first workshop

Those 25 students who went through the Twi poetry workshop were then invited to participate in our first poetry writing competition, but that’s a story for a future blog post.

A big thank you to Kwame Brenya for his boldness, passion, and patience in conducting the first guest teacher workshop at Kasadwini Atenaeɛ! He not only taught our students how to write Twi poetry, but he instilled in them a sense of confidence that they (and their language) were worth listening to, which is central to Untold’s mission. Kwame, Nyame nhyira wo!