The COVID-19 crisis and subsequent school closures threw huge challenges at the global teacher workforce. Throughout 2020, VVOB and education partners have been more determined than ever to ensure teachers are properly supported and encouraged. Collaboration, resilience and creativity on everyone’s part made it possible to continue to support teachers; and to continue learning.
This story is featured in our 2020 annual report Blended learning: the future of education?. You can download the full report here.
Unprecedented challenges
All around the world, teachers are coping with the effects of the COVID-19 crisis the best way they can. Sudden school closures forced them to find new and remote ways to support children’s learning and wellbeing in times of crises and disruption. Even in cases where schools were able to reopen, business was not as usual: teachers have to deal with new health and safety regulations; many teachers are rightly concerned about the possible impact of COVID-19 on their own health and safety; teachers have had to adapt their teaching to large groups of children who have missed out on learning and who struggle with socio-emotional wellbeing; teachers need to find their way around adapted curricula and school calendars. And so on.
In other words, teachers are in dire need of support. However, our tried-and-tested recipes for supporting teachers through professional development trajectories have mostly been based on face-to-face methodologies pre-pandemic. Considering the circumstances, these familiar recipes were not appropriate, and we had to adapt – fast.
From the very outset, VVOB teams and partners showed great resilience and creativity in adapting existing VVOB programmes, planning and capacity development trajectories to the new situation. Gradually, we also started developing novel responses to the challenges that teachers specifically faced. This reflective process uncovered new opportunities and innovations that will not only allow us to better support teachers during the current pandemic, but that will also allow VVOB and partners to reshape the way we support teachers and learners in a post-pandemic world.
Reaching teachers remotely – without internet
Faced with the prospect of long-term school closures and very limited options for face-to-face training of teachers in early childhood education (ECE) in Zambia, VVOB and the Ministry of General Education (MoGE) are experimenting with the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology for trainings.
IVR is a high-frequency, cost-effective and measurable remote training solution that does not require a smartphone or internet access, and does not involve costs for participants. The telephony system interacts with callers, and it gathers and routes information to the selected recipients. The IVR automated system provides ECE teachers with pre-recorded voice messages that briefly introduce a specific element of the training content. After the delivery of the content, teachers are given a short pop-quiz to test to what extent they have been able to process the information. Finally, they are given a small task or exercise that they can work on at home or in their classroom in cases where schools are open. The use of IVR fits in a broader blended teacher professional development trajectory that makes use of high-quality resources (teacher manuals), face-to-face trainings, IVR messaging and teleconference call coaching to provide deeper level learning opportunities for teachers. While initially set-up as an emergency alternative for face-to-face trainings in times of physical distancing measures, MoGE and VVOB are quickly discovering the potential of the IVR system for regular teacher professional development.
Supporting teachers to support each other
In South Africa, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) and VVOB have a long history in strengthening teacher professional development through professional learning communities (PLCs). PLCs allow teachers to collectively determine their own learning goals and trajectories. PLCs can be used to discuss, test, and reflect on educational innovations and how they can be translated into classroom practice.
When the pandemic hit, regular professional development for teachers through, for example, workshops and training sessions, came to a grinding halt. At the same time, teachers were faced with new realities, challenges, and questions: How can I best provide remote teaching to my learners? How do I deal with health and safety issues when schools reopen? How can I support my learners’ wellbeing? How do I implement the adapted curriculum?
PLCs offered an opportunity for teachers to continue to learn with each other through small and safe gatherings or in online sessions. To support teachers in these challenging times, DBE and VVOB developed an online course for teachers on ‘PLCs in times of COVID-19’. This online course supports teachers in two ways:
- Firstly, it provides teachers with information and support on how to organise face-to-face PLCs safely or how to organise them in an online environment.
- Secondly, the online course provides guidance to teachers and their PLCs to engage in professional development around a number of key COVID-19 issues, including: understanding COVID-19; ensuring teacher wellbeing; supporting learner wellbeing; organising remote teaching and learning.
Complementary to these online PLC courses for teachers, VVOB supports District Education Officials to use these online courses as part of their outreach to schools and PLCs. Through online capacity development trajectories, these Officials are in turn trained to use these online resources effectively.
Involving parents and communities too
Traditionally, VVOB is concerned with supporting ministries of Education in the (very) long term. The crisis, however, prompted us to reflect on VVOB’s role in dealing with the more immediate effects of the pandemic: How do we support our partners to make up for lost time learning? How do we make sure that every learner, the most vulnerable ones included, find their way back to school and continue learning in a way that safeguards their physical and socioemotional wellbeing? In addition to rethinking the ways in which we support our traditional target groups and beneficiaries, this also meant developing approaches towards other target groups, like learners’ parents and their communities.
Supported by the LEGO Foundation, VVOB initiated emergency response projects in South Africa, Zambia and Vietnam to minimise learning losses and to ensure physical and emotional wellbeing of the youngest learners by promoting learning through play, not only at school but also in their homes.
In Vietnam for example, VVOB harnessed the power of social and mass media communication to encourage and support teachers and parents to apply learning through play in their daily practice, helping children to catch-up on learning losses and to deal with the socioemotional challenges of the pandemic and school closures.
As part of the mass communication campaign, VVOB developed a video series which aired on the national education television channel VTV7. It focussed on learning through play and the role of play in fostering crucial developmental domains. Through the online campaign, teachers and parents were encouraged to come up with creative playful responses to challenges that were shared via social media. Combined, the social and mass media communication campaign allowed VVOB and partners to reach over six million people and to actively engage over 70,000 people on the importance of learning through play for children’s learning and wellbeing in times of crisis.
Socio-emotional wellbeing matters!
While students spend most of their time at home during the COVID-19 lockdown in Ecuador, the need to support students in their home environment grew rapidly. Students were struggling to cope with the health-related, emotional, psychological and economic strains of the pandemic. As a comprehensive community approach, restorative practices were perfectly placed to fulfil that need. Pre-pandemic, schools were encouraged to apply the tools of restorative practices when mitigating peer-on-peer violence in educational settings: active listening, restorative dialogue, nonviolent communication, and restorative circles. The strategy seeks to repair and strengthen relationships between individuals and build stronger communities, for instance in the case of violence, bullying or conflict.
VVOB and partners set out to develop a range of resources that were made available to officials, teachers and parents to form a comprehensive response to support student’s wellbeing in times of crisis. As part of the response, the team developed a series of videos and booklets which provide parents and teachers with ideas and suggestions to apply the tools of the restorative approach in their families during the pandemic. Through the school counsellors, the response also involved setting up a number of online ‘restorative circles’: spaces for communication and dialogue around the repercussions of social distancing and lockdown on human wellbeing and relationships.
Looking back at 2020, there is little to rejoice. However, at VVOB we do feel that thanks to the resilience and creativity of our teams and partners, new opportunities and new perspectives have arisen. Opportunities that will allow our partners, teachers and learners to continue to recover from this COVID-19 crisis and to bounce back better.
