Ending education inequities requires a collective effort and we won’t achieve education equity and equality unless we all do our parts.
That is why, “Teach for Uganda nurture leaders who are committed to advancing equitable access to quality Education in low income communities with a vision of providing every child with an opportunity to attain an equitable quality Education“.
Last term on 10th January 2022 I began my placement journey as a fellow with Teach for Uganda. It was challenging yet eye opening as I came to a realization of some the key contributing factors to teacher’s and students absenteeism like walking distances and lack of staff quarters among other factors that affect learners performance like staying at school the whole day without food or lack of scholastic materials.
Some of the key highlights from my term one placement were among others;
- Attending a donor visit and having a discussion with one of the donor supporting tfu. It was great sharing my motivation for the fellowship and what we were doing.
- Participating in sports activities with my learners and encouraging them to join sports activities to build their confidence and join school clubs. And I intend to continue empowering the girl guides club to be young champions and empower other girls in the school and the community. As I introduced other livelihood skills like making liquid soap and reusable sanitary pads thus promoting menstrual hygiene.
- Introducing my learners to digital learning; at the beginning of the term,my learners were not getting the letters of the alphabet until I made them watch the Jack Hartman letters of the Alphabet video.. They loved it and we decided to make digital learning part of our class since our school is already running a digital learning program with support from teach for Uganda.
- Administering end of term 1 exams to my learners to monitor their progress was another highlight. It was unfortunate though that some learners couldn’t afford the examination fees of only 2000 Ugandan shillings less than a dollar. But I tried my best to support them by contributing for some learners and I do hope that this term you will join me to support all my learners to do their end of term exams.
Beginning of term 2, a new challenge at hand .
We began our term 2 on 9th of May 2022 with a pre term training for both fellows and teachers. It was so interesting as teachers need to constantly learn to keep up with the changes in education and I would say some of the contend like play based learning was new to me, and I appreciated collaborating teaching which has improved my teaching relations with my co teacher and also not forgetting the session on how to incorporate SDGs into our lessons and school activities.
The mid term training has also empowered my co teacher and enabled her to embrace the concept of leadership in class. Now we have a new practice of teaching learners in groups with a leader in every group as we closely monitor the activities of each group and assist those who are way behind.
Well aside from the pre term training, term 2 also started with a new challenge, half of my learners of 120 pupils had no books and majority came back with old books from last term which are either full , destroyed or got too dirty on the way to and from school.
As such we came up with the idea of keeping the learners books at school and each learner having atleast four books so as to enable them use the books separately like for English and numeracy. And in response to that between Monday 16th and Wednesday 18th my co teacher who is also the class teacher decided to send learners back to request their parents to buy books but we have had no positive response. I have managed to pay visits to atleast 3 homes of which the parents claim they cant afford buying four books at the moment. NB. Each book of 96 pages cost 1000 Ugandan shillings and four will cost 4000 per learner. Around 1.1 USD.
Only 4 have managed to come with four books of 96 pages so far but I intend to continue reaching out to the parents.
Play you part.
So are you still asking yourself what roles you can play in ending education inequities in Uganda. Simply donate a pencil, a book,or 1k and together let’s give a chance to my learners to have access to quality education like other children in private schools and city schools.
Let’s put a smile on the faces of the p.1 learners of Kaluuba Primary School.
Feel free to reach me on +256780584611
nancyongom273@gmail.com for more discussion on how you can play your part.
“Be the change that you want to see in the world,” Act Now.
Thanks for reading, @nancyongom
nancyongom 