The Multimedia Institute of Ghana is a school I never knew existed however I knew about the National service. After school, I had the opportunity to work for a year and earn a decent living.
Mind you, the National Service run by the National Service Secretariat is a mandatory requirement by the government of Ghana for University graduates or students of higher learning to work a full year for the country. Before completion, we were asked to fill out forms or let me say register for regions we would love to offer our service. I had the opportunity to choose 3 regions that are the Eastern Region, Greater Accra, and the Central Region. I was fortunate to be posted to the Pantang Regional Hospital as a special educator but due to the location, I had it changed to the Ofankor D/A Primary School in the Ga West Municipal District. There I had the opportunity of teaching regular students outside the Special School environment.
Before that, I remember going to the National Service Secretariat to have my card and acceptance letter printed and endorsed officially. The queue I had to form was enormous and it took hours for me to finalize this, and once I did I wasted no time getting to the school and making inquiries on the dos and don’ts of teachers in the school. I was thrilled personally because I now had the chance to practice everything I had studied back in Winneba. I was thrilled about this and told close friends who had hopes of doing their National Service as well. To me, it was going to be a tiring experience but I was wrong on the first day of school as a regular instructor. It felt really good especially when the students began to address me with the terms “Sir” and “Mr”. Not that I was new to this however it was in a serious work environment hence it carried a huge magnitude to me.
I had the opportunity to work with a class 6 tutor. I cannot remember her name but she was influential in assisting me to settle down in the classroom environment. Aside from teaching the students, I was helping them with Physical Education lessons as well. This was a 7 to 4 pm kind of teaching job hence I was pretty exhausted every day. I often went to the school on the weekends specifically on Saturdays to assist them with classes as well. Now since this was a public school, I observed the unbothered demeanor of the students during and after classes and all I could to make them love the idea of studying. The main teacher was a busy woman hence would leave the class to my care and run errands both for herself and the school. Once I got the class to myself, I tried playing educational games with the students during their free lesson periods. I remember one game they loved was the spelling game widely known as “dictation”.
With this, I gave them a series of words to spell, mostly 10, and as the number went up I increased the spelling difficulty. I often rewarded students who performed well in this exercise hence they were always requesting for me to have a dictation. This improved their spelling abilities in the long run. I was glad I was able to see to that. Due to my background in special education (intellectual disability), I often collaborated with a Special Education Coordinator and offered assistance to students who needed assistance. She specialized in the area of the Visually impaired hence we worked well. Most of the assistance given at the time was providing medicinal spectacles to students who had difficulty seeing from afar, a condition known as myopia. To be honest I had fewer cases to tackle since most of the students under my watch were regular glasses.
Once all these stressful activities rolled before my eyes, I was being paid an amount of 559 Ghana cedis as salary. An amount was being issued to all Service personnel in the country hence it was mandatory to receive it. On one Sunday, I witnessed a school advertisement on TV and it was an advertisement of a media school that seemed to have enticed me enough to watch. It was the Multimedia Institute of Ghana located at Accra Central next to the Central Bank of the country. After visiting the school and making inquiries about their admission opportunities, I informed my family about
this career path. Since my family knew I loved the media occupation so much they did not flinch about my decision hence I was allowed to grab forms to register for a year of studies at this media school. I got admitted and was asked to make it a point to show up for Weekend classes. Classes were divided into 3 periods due to the limited time on our hands. I remember having to take a Journalism Program with courses in Media and Journalism Studies, Radio and TV presentation, and Literacy over the whole period.
It was fun actually because I was not studying too much but enough to pass certain quizzes we took along the way. Per the school’s curricula, a compulsory internship will be given to me after I have completed the program over the 1 year. Now let me give you a fair idea of my class and what activities in the media school were like. I had 10 classmates in total making a class of 11 students, thus lessons were not tedious like it was in tertiary school. We had a 30-minute break after the first and second lessons which prepared us for the last lesson before climaxing the day’s activities. So this routine went on for the entire period while I taught as a Service personnel. I still wonder how I pulled that off but it happened. I made friends who helped shape my mentality and the way I saw people and since it was a small class, I communicated more with them. I unintentionally got into verbal arguments with them but I always appreciated them for who they truly are. Of course, they saw me as a “headache” sometimes thus it was a tolerable atmosphere they helped create. I vividly remember these names; Jennifer, Dela, Emmanuel, Akua, and Haizel mostly because I was in constant communication with them.
Remember I had begun the service before starting school hence I completed the service and bid farewell to the Ofankor MA now D/A school in September 2019 and had full focus on my books. It was very easy theoretically but I struggled mostly with the TV studio practicals I was exposed to later in the program. I was okay with the Radio setups made available due to my past experiences at Windy Bay in Winneba. With constant practice, I got better and began interviewing my colleagues in a make-believe TV show created by the lecturers. The school had other things planned for its students and I was very happy to involve myself in all of them. I had time on my hands after all the teaching I had done. One trip I vividly recall was the one to the Despite Media Group where we stopped by their media sub-houses which include United Television, Okay FM, Peace FM, Hello FM, and Neat FM. I learned the use and importance of blue screens in mainstream media production and got to see most of the TV and radio presenters in action as they prepared to go live on air. It was amazing seeing that with my own eyes and how well-organized the place was. The whole exercise ended before the evening news was broadcast. I made my way home with notes for future reference and a potential quiz later in the term.
I remember having to do a live radio presentation as my final project. This would be recorded and presented to my lecturer/supervisor for my certificate to be issued by the school. Getting a hand on an interviewee was a burden I handled with the help of a colleague and that I would say was enough for my project. She was a media personality by the name of Maya who had left the media space to make more money for other equally pressing issues in her life. I got to know this after a brief chat with her after our interview on the effects of domestic violence in young relationships aged between 19 and 27. As expected, I was posted to Glory TV now known as Sankofa Television for an internship. I will delve deeper into that in the coming posts but now let us take a breather.
Check in to the next post however if you are lost, feel free to read my earlier posts to have an idea of where it all started.