Professional Development

In several of the recent blog posts Anna and I have alluded to seminars that we are holding with the teachers. Although this was not something we had initially planned on doing, it quickly became apparent to us that many of our teachers lacked training and seminars would be a good way to provide them with resources and tools they needed to become more effective teachers. 

Our school currently has nine teachers and we have recently hired two more that will start soon. Out of our current nine, two teachers attended a one-week training prior to the school year starting. Three or four of them taught at the former village school and have several years of teaching experience, but no formal training. The rest have no experience and no training. Therefore, Anna and I decided that one of our main focuses needed to be getting the teachers up to speed.

We have given our teachers a survey to ask about what areas they would like training in. In addition, we make daily observations and rounds at the school that we use to make notes on common struggles or challenges the teachers are facing. We are looking for areas that all of the teachers could improve on. Once we have identified common needs, we begin to develop our seminar around those one or two topics. For example, we have covered topics such as how to teach vocabulary in a meaningful way and effective ways to teach reading/English. 

This week we will be covering classroom and time management.

One of the huge struggles we’ve had at the school is in regards to time: teachers not following the timetables (schedule), lunch break lasting for two hours instead of the scheduled one, school starting 45 minutes late, teachers grading assignments during class while the students sit and stare at each other, etc. This lack of schedule often results in students being off-task or misbehaving and the teachers have little to no idea how to discipline them without using the cane (a very common practice in Ghana, but not permitted at our school). Therefore, we decided to develop a seminar based on these concerns.

Anna and I will be talking with the teachers about the importance of consistency both in regards to following the timetable and discipline. We will be providing them with a list of productive things they can have students do when they finish an assignment early, such as reading a book, math facts, writing a letter. The seminar will also encourage teachers to shift from negative reinforcement to positive reinforcement for discipline. We will discuss the benefit of setting up rewards, such as an extra break or no homework pass, if students are doing what they are supposed to. This will hopefully eliminate the need to discipline if students are motivated by extrinsic factors. Small details too such as the teacher separating problem students and moving around the classroom will help minimize problems before they arise. Most of these techniques are things that seem like no brainers to trained teachers, but may be concepts these teachers with no training never would have considered.

It is our belief that in order to truly improve learning at this school it is going to have to come from the teachers. The material being taught does not matter if it is not taught well. Therefore, Anna and I continue to be excited by the growth and the effort we are seeing the teachers make and are excited to see how this will impact our students. We will continue to identify areas of need and provide as much support and as many resources as we can to support our teachers and students.

As always, if you would like to make a donation to support the school please use the link on the right hand side of the blog. If you have questions or want more information on ways to get involved please email us at kccschool15@gmail.com. Thank you for continuing to follow and share our journey with us!

~Mary~