In August, Joshua Muskin, conducted a pair of workshops to support Geneva Global Ethiopia’s operation of two home-based instruction initiatives in Amhara region. The operation in Amhara will begin as the next school year starts in September . GG-Eth is reviving and reinforcing a home-based instruction strategy that Geneva Global designed and conducted during the COVID-19 school closures in Ethiopia and Uganda, serving to keep children learning when classroom instruction was not an option. In the Amhara region, many schools are presently closed not because of a pandemic but because of armed conflict. A recent report from the Amhara Regional Education Bureau counted 45.7% (4,821) of all schools in the region are presently closed.
The one initiative will engage GG-Eth in operating home-based instruction activities as part of two new ECHO funded projects, one with People in Need and the other with Plan International. Dr. Muskin and GG-Eth colleagues joined with Plan and PIN counterparts to review the strategic aspects of effective implementation, including the location of learning groups, the mobilization of students, and the identification training of teachers. The basic approach will involve single teachers going daily to homesteads or other designated spots in local communities to deliver the Speed School program to groups of 20 students.
The other initiative, in Amhara, will engage GG-Eth alone in a wider reaching home-based instruction effort. Individual teachers will instead float between six to eight separate learning pods of six to ten students each to guide them in self-directed learning activities. The teacher will visit each pod every two or three days, but every learning pod will be supported daily by a local tutor selected by the students’ parents for her/his capacity and commitment to accompany the students well.
During the workshop, Dr. Muskin worked with university faculty and regional staff from Amhara to solidify their understanding of Geneva Global’s approach to competency-based instruction and their ability to prepare the learning packets that will guide the pods in their learning. Dr. Muskin’s collaboration with the university colleagues continues as they now focus on the development of the full set of learning packets, covering Grades 1 and 2. We look forward to reporting on the implementation and impacts of the two initiatives in the future.