New Readers for Children in Sierra Leone
In Sierra Leone, schools were set back, twice within two decades. The violently destructive Mano River War from 1991-2002 closed schools, damaged structures and drove educators from the country. Recently, Ebola closed schools, community centers, businesses and more from July 2014 to the end of April 2015.
As part of the Post Ebola Education Task force, Jo Kuyvenhoven helped develop, implement and disburse an accelerated curriculum guide to all schools, for every subject and level. Leading workshops for secondary and for primary teachers, she worked with colleagues for more effective lesson planning. These curricular supports and workshops “cascaded” out to the nearly 9000 schools in Sierra Leone.
More recently (November 2015), she distributed readers for young children (1st- 3rd grade) with poems, short stories and non fiction texts. She also wrote detailed curricular supports for using these over the course of a year. These go out to two thousand grade 1-3 classrooms.
Because Jo Kuyvenhoven has more than 15 years of experience in Sierra Leone, they are designed with the real teachers and children in mind. Classroom teaching in Sierra Leone is most challenging. And, indeed, as current research shows, becoming a reader in Sierra Leone is, an unusual accomplishment. Classrooms are crowded, poorly furnished, and include almost no reading materials. Children speak three languages fluently, sing songs, play intricate clapping games and hold their own in an argument; but they have no experience with books. They need an exceptional teacher. However, although 60% of all school teachers are not trained for their positions, nearly 100% of early level teachers are not trained. Children are led by teachers with no training and weak reading abilities.
For this reason it was important that the readers included a good guide and a support for their learning to use it. With 70 teacher trainers and coaches, she practiced using them to plan lessons leading children into awareness of the sounds of language, to learn alphabet letters, develop writing abilities and more.
However, as is true in literacy teaching everywhere, such learning happens more surely if children discover that reading is relevant to their lives, interesting and just plain fun. The readers were designed to deeply connect reading and writing with their own lives. The Great Hope is that children and teachers together enjoy reading and use writing to think about their lives.
More information is available by contacting Professor Kuyvenhoven at jck8@calvin.edu.