In the first two weeks of the third school term, Akampa Secret visited four schools in Magamaga Town Council, where she serves as a teacher coach with enjuba. In each of these schools, she noticed that most of the teachers struggled with developing a lesson plan from the curriculum. Some of them waited the entire week for the time she would visit to ask how a lesson plan could be developed.
Akampa has been working in Mayuge since the start of the year, as part of our pioneer cohort of teacher coaches and her role involves supporting pre-primary teachers working with a simplified curriculum. This support involves weekly visits to each of the five schools in which she works, sit in on lessons and offers feedback, and offer continuous professional development for the teachers she serves.
The sessions cover how to deliver content from the simplified curriculum, how to use locally available materials in place of costly ones, and how to create an inclusive classroom environment.
When she noticed the teacher's struggles at St. Peter's Wandago Primary School she took teachers through a mini-refresher workshop delivering the simplified curriculum. In the Ansaar Muslim and Hill View Nur and Primary Schools, Akampa focused her time with the teachers on building an inclusive classroom. The main objective of these sessions is to ensure that the teachers are confident and able to deliver the curriculum to the learners. By making these sessions routine, coaches have an opportunity to collaborate with the teachers on challenges around lesson delivery and learning schemes on a weekly basis rather than waiting on a termly review.
So Akampa has been running continuous professional development sessions in the schools she supports. The sessions cover how to deliver content from the simplified curriculum, how to use locally available materials in place of expensive ones, and how to create an inclusive classroom environment. At St. Peter's Wandago Primary School she took teachers through delivering the simplified curriculum. At Ansaar Muslim Primary School the session focused on building an inclusive classroom. At Hill View Nur and Primary School she walked teachers through the curriculum and how to deliver it.
For the teachers, the difference is in how they work with the curriculum. A teacher from Ansaar Muslim Primary School put it this way:
Now that I can interpret the curriculum on my own, I will always prepare my lesson plans and teaching and learning materials in time.
That is the aim of our Teacher coaching model. A teacher who can interpret the curriculum on her own no longer needs to wait for the coach to arrive before deciding what to teach.