What is the role of a teacher when schools are closed?

Seven weeks ago, nearly 150 Impact Network teachers opted to return to their school sites and undertake a new way of working and connecting with students and families during COVID-19. Many of our teachers live away from their families in rural villages when they are teaching, so they packed up their things, said goodbye to extended family and checked in with an Impact staff member who issued them masks, soap, and a new job description detailing daily work for Impact Network teachers while schools are closed.

To be completely honest, every one of us from the senior management team to the teachers in the furthest village was wondering how this attempt at a remote approach to school would unfold. Flash forward to this past week, and our Teacher Supervisors and Operations Coordinators have completed a major pick-up and delivery process to all 40+ schools. We included a detailed survey to get a better picture of the work of our teachers and the impact we are having on students during this difficult time. Here’s what we’ve learned:

Teachers are helping students stay connected to learning, even when classes are canceled.

Each day, our teachers visit five to eight students to deliver schoolwork and provide a brief 1:1 tutoring session for the student. Last week, our teachers collectively conducted 3,584 visits to students in Grades 1-6. Teachers conduct these visits outdoors, they wear masks, and maintain social distancing. When asked about these visits, teachers shared a variety of strategies they are using to support students, including visiting struggling students more often than others, using stones or other easy to find objects to model math problems, bringing picture aides along for student visits, and coaching parents on how to help at home.

Student records in rural Zambia do not include addresses, so teachers are using word of mouth to locate students. The vast majority of teachers (75%) are walking, though some cycle, to meet with students. Two-thirds of our teachers reported walking more than 30 minutes one way to reach students.

Teachers are authoring local language books for classroom use.

Another task for teachers during this remote work time is to write and illustrate three Cinyanja books – an alphabet book, a simple pattern book for beginning readers, and a storybook. As of last week, teachers had submitted 239 books. We expect to receive an additional 175 books from teachers by the end of August. Those books are now being reviewed by our Teacher Supervisors and eventually, they will be scanned and published for online and offline use through the African Storybook Project. Our long-term goal is to make these books available on our tablets for use across all Impact Network schools.

Teachers are continuing to learn and grow professionally.

We distributed self-study packets with daily exercises designed to help teachers reflect on their practice and learn new strategies and techniques. Our recent survey indicates that teachers are working diligently on these activities and are finding value in them. Additionally, teachers reported some other professional learning we hadn’t intentionally facilitated. One teacher reported learning better ways to “share with parent’s ideas on the learner’s progress,” while another shared that they are becoming better at providing “support individually depending on the needs of the learner.” Another teacher shared the benefits of having “a chance to know and interact with the learners’ parents.”

Taken as a whole, having teachers work remotely during COVID has come with challenges, but these are far outweighed by the benefits. One teacher from Kanyelele summed it up best: “I am happy with this program because the learners have a chance to remember what they were doing at school and it will not be so big a challenge for them to cope when schools resume.”

-Annabelle Hardy, Director of Academics

A chance to remember what they were doing at school...