Training untrained teachers

The majority of community school teachers are not formally trained. Some teachers have only completed grade nine. The majority complete grade twelve, but do not meet the requirements for college. Various NGOs and development agencies have developed training packages and manuals to build basic teaching skills in untrained teachers. In the confusing world of acronyms, some of these training programmes include SPARK, SPRINT, REX, CHANGES, QUESTT, AIMES, and GEMS. I would share what the acronyms stand for, but I barely know myself. Most programmes produced are in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, but it seems every international agency promotes its own package.

Some of the programmes focus on increasing literacy levels and others try to integrate gender, HIV/AIDS, life skills, health and nutrition programmes, etc. into basic school curriculum. There is also an interactive radio instruction programme where the teacher tunes into a radio programme that provides the lesson plan and content for a class. Aside from turning on the radio and keeping the class in order, the teacher does very little (actually, the teacher probably does a lot seeing that some classes have over 100 kids). With the plethora of materials, it is a difficult choice to decide which to promote. Then again, the community school teacher uses the materials, which are available to him or her and not all programmes have been equally promoted. Not surprisingly, schools within a three-hour drive radius from Lusaka benefit the most. Although each district or at least each province in Zambia has a teacher resource centre, individual teachers have very little access to the resources.

As a supporting organisation to community schools, one of our roles is to link and facilitate teacher training programmes to reach teachers on ground level. At a stakeholders’ meeting today, the Ministry of Education with funding from USAID announced that it will put together a comprehensive training tool kit specifically geared to build the skills of community teachers who may never formally upgrade their qualifications. I was encouraged when various ministry people recognized that manuals were being produced, only to be abandoned and then reproduced with a different name. Under an initiative called CHANGES2, the Ministry of Education will somehow work with partners and community stakeholders to bring together the various training programmes into a Community School Toolkit.

Aside from being somewhat sceptical whether this toolkit will be anymore usable than any previous programmes, it was a cool meeting be a part of where people including some working for the ministry were critical about previous initiatives. If I had my way, I would stop making manuals with only words in them. Or, stop doing training in the form of manuals. In most schools I’ve visited so far, those manuals just hold open doors, collect dust, or worse get used as toilet paper.

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In other news, my housemate cut my hair! I am somewhat afraid as to what I will look like tomorrow…