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Salome Otami, Child Development
Change Agent
Salome Otami"I first came to Tufts in 2004 as a Tufts-in-Ghana exchange student," says Otami. "One of the things I saw and observed about the culture here [in the United States] was that preschool children were given the opportunity to do everything. They were allowed to draw, paint, play with blocks, and explore the world around them. In Ghana, children in preschools are not allowed to do these things. They wait for their teacher to tell them, 'this is what we're going to do.'"
After recognizing these different educational experiences, Otami contacted the President of the University of Education, Winneba with the hope that something could be done. The pair exchanged several e-mails and phone calls and, once her exchange program concluded, Salome Otami went to work.
"When I came back to Ghana, I accepted an offer by the President to join the school's Department of Psychology and Education," says Otami, who received a full-tuition scholarship from GSAS to pursue her graduate studies. "I was asked during my first semester to teach a methods course which had over 124 undergraduate students in it. I discussed with them the need to organize some outreach programs, and then my students and I went out in groups to all the early childhood centers in Ghana. We discussed with the proprietors of these centers what their children needed and what would give them a good foundation for the future."
Otami at the Eliot-PearsonChildren’s School.
"The program I started is not funded, so the student visits to early childhood centers in Winneba are no longer happening," says Otami, who speaks to her husband and three children (who range in age from fourteen to twenty) weekly but hasn't seen them since she came to Tufts last fall. "But once I graduate, I plan to work again with students and get more involved with the parent outreach program I started."
Until then, Salome Otami will do what she's done since her first visit to Tufts as an exchange student. She will listen intently during each class, absorb each and every reading, and complete each assignment with the knowledge that what she has learned (and will learn) will impact the lives of thousands of children in Ghana.
And she may even get some rest along the way.
"Anytime I attend a class here at Tufts and go home, I find it difficult to sleep," she says. "I will stay up at night and think, 'Salome, look at what is happening here. We can do the same thing to help the children of Ghana.'"
This article originally appeared in the spring 2007 edition of Alma Matters, the magazine for Tufts Arts, Sciences, and Engineering graduate alumni.
Article written by Robert Bochnak, G07
Photos by Jodi Hilton
