Faces of the Read Haiti/Strong Beginnings Radio Program
The Read Haiti/Strong Beginnings Radio program is made possible through the support of USAID, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and an Anonymous Foundation.
When schools shut down in Haiti on March 19th due to COVID-19, the Strong Beginnings team, led by Kate Schuenke-Lucien, was already in the midst of contingency planning for how they would transition their classroom literacy program in Haiti to a distance learning platform. Challenging in any context, contingency planning in light of the low-tech reality of most Haitian households complicated the task even further, not to mention the immediate and accelerated timetable of the crisis. In collaboration with the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child and partnerships with Catholic Relief Services and the National Office for Catholic Education, the team landed on the use of radios, powered with solar panels, and weekly literacy and social and emotional learning programs broadcasted over local Catholic and community-run radio stations as a means to reach even the most remote learners.
With schools officially back in session in Haiti, today we take a look back and highlight the student faces of the Read Haiti/Strong Beginnings radio program and celebrate their dedication and hard work!
Marc and Daniel
Meet Marc and Daniel, a first and seventh grader from Cap-Haitien, Haiti. When COVID-19 forced school closures in Haiti, Marc and Daniel did not know when they would get to see their schools, teachers, and classmates again, and without access to a computer or a cellphone to stay in touch, they began to worry about getting behind in their schoolwork. They both have big dreams, and even at a young age, they recognize the important role education will play in their future. Even though they do not attend a school from the Read Haiti/Strong Beginnings program, they learned about the radio program through a neighbor and jumped at the opportunity to keep learning during school closures. Using their family’s radio to tune in for daily lessons, Marc and Daniel stayed on track with their studies and were prepared and excited when schools reopened in August 2020.
Cesnie-Flores
Cesnie-Flores is only in first grade but already loves learning. By way of example, when we first asked Cesnie-Flores what she was most excited about going back to school for she matter-of-factly explained, “so I can get good grades and keep learning!” When COVID-19 reached Haiti, she was devastated because she wasn’t able to do her favorite thing: go to school! Fortunately, the Read Haiti/Strong Beginnings radio program brought learning to her through its weekly lessons. Before she received a radio from the program, Cesnie-Flores was determined not to get behind and listened to the radio program through her family’s telephone with her mom. However, the telephone’s radio feature did not provide the best quality, so having a new radio that she could charge all by herself was a big improvement!
Jamesly
Basking in their newfound freedom when schools first closed, Jamesly and his siblings got in the habit of playing with other kids in the neighborhood all day. His mother, Jesula, knew that there was very little studying and schoolwork happening during these adventures and began to worry about Jamesely and his siblings staying on track with their studies. The delivery of a solar-paneled radio and program outline from the Read Haiti/Strong Beginnings radio program came at just the right time and re-engaged Jamesly and his siblings in their education.
Katia
When schools shut down due to COVID-19, Katia eagerly awaited their reopening. While getting to play with her brother every day was fun, she quickly began to miss school. She has big plans and knew she needed to know all of her letters if she wanted to learn to read and write and keep progressing. Through the Read Haiti/Strong Beginnings radio program, Katia was able to listen to new literacy broadcasts each week and master her letters. Now, she is excited to be back in school and grateful that she was able to stay on track through the radio lessons.
Wilelmine
During COVID-19 school closures in Haiti, Wilelmine had to balance all of her household chores and stay on track with her learning. Fortunately, Wilelmine studied hard with her friends by tuning into the Read Haiti/Strong Beginnings radio program. Now she’s excited to be back in school and ready to build on the skills the radio program helped her develop! At school, she loves learning in her native tongue, Haitian Creole, but she knows that her dream to be a nurse and to help as many people as possible will require her to be able to speak in French and Creole, which is why she is excited to be a part of the Read Haiti program that teaches her to read in her mother tongue before learning to read in French.
You can learn more about these students’ experiences and access the complete collection of radio programs on our Read Haiti/Strong Beginnings radio program page.
Be Well, Teach Well
A Locally Defined and Participatory Approach to Measuring Teacher Well-being | Uganda
Teachers’ well-being is context-specific and refers to how teachers feel and function in their jobs, including their affections, attitudes, and evaluations of their work. It is affected by varied individual (e.g., displacement status), school-level (e.g., limited resources), and contextual (e.g., community violence) challenges that often lead to emotional exhaustion, lower cognitive and social-emotional functioning, and ultimately hinder teachers’ ability to help students develop social and emotional skills. Teacher well-being is particularly important to consider in a context such as Uganda, where teachers’ job satisfaction is low, teacher shortages are high, and the educational demands of both Ugandan and refugee communities have left the education system overstretched, reducing teachers’ ability to address their own well-being or to support students’ well-being and learning.
Our Approach
Despite the global emphasis on improving student social and emotional learning outcomes, there is little attention paid to teachers’ well-being. Moreover, there are few validated, rigorous assessments of teachers’ well-being that can be adapted for low-resource and displacement contexts. If the global education community is truly committed to providing equitable, quality learning opportunities for students then more attention must be paid to teacher well-being, including how to assess and better support teachers’ well-being in low-resource and displacement contexts, like Uganda.
Therefore, our research-practice consortium— the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child (GC-DWC), Luigi Giussani Institute of Higher Education (LGIHE), and Save the Children—will engage a diverse group of teachers from settlement and non-settlement contexts in Uganda to co-create a contextually-appropriate teacher well-being measurement tool. The study is composed of three phases which build upon each other.
Phase 1: Exploring perspectives of well-being Brief ethnographic interviews with 150 teachers across 5 research sites: Palabek, Rwamwanja/Hoima, Kampala, Moroto, and Wakiso. Understand how primary grade teachers in Uganda understand well-being.
Phase 2: Teacher-driven participatory research: establish teacher research group (TRG) comprised of 10 teachers (2 per re-search site and 50% female). TRG will meet twice to review phase 1 findings and co-develop an item bank that the research team can use to design the teacher well-being survey. Facilitate teacher participation in definition of well-being constructs that should be measured.
Phase 3: Validating the assessment Pilot test of 300 teachers (60 per research site). Perform psychometric analysis to understand validity and reliability of survey. Develop a validated teacher well-being survey, with accompanying administration guidance.
Goals, Progress, and Impact
Our project goals are to:
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Ensure that key stakeholders have a common understanding of the importance of teacher well-being.
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Build awareness within the Ugandan, East African, and global education community about the participatory, co-design process through which we can develop contextualized measures of teacher’s well-being.
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Ensure that partners in Uganda know how to use the survey so that it can help further our understanding of teacher’s well-being in Uganda.
Read the press release.
Be Well, Teach Well is funded by USAID’s Long-term Assistance and Services for Research: Partners for University-Led Solutions Engine (LASER PULSE) initiative. LASER PULSE is a five-year, $70-million consortium. Led by Purdue University, LASER PULSE also includes Catholic Relief Services, Indiana University, and Makerere University. LASER PULSE counts on a global network of more than 2,300 researchers and non-governmental organization (NGO) representatives in 61 countries as partners in supporting the discovery and uptake of field-sourced, evidence-based solutions to development challenges spanning all USAID technical sectors and global geographic regions.
