By Merritt Frey, Executive Director
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a new strategy we are piloting. This strategy is designed to help our students, who have been out of the classroom since March (and missed several earlier months due to teacher strikes) stay connected with school and practice some core language skills from home.
The idea is basic — there is no online learning option in Mali’s rural villages! Instead, we sent home workbooks with 7th and 8th grade students at Tim Gibson Middle School in Sebela. If students completed the workbook they would receive soap for their families; top scoring students would receive bags of rice to share with their family.
We are really pleased with the test run’s completion rate, with 62% of the kids returning completed workbooks. We were also pleased with the results, with the top scorers scoring 14 or 15 out of 20 points. We were less pleased with the average — 9 out of 20 points — but that just goes to show how much the students need to practice!
Perhaps more importantly, the students seemed to have fun with the workbooks and appreciated their small prizes. We are currently testing this idea in a second village, and hope to roll out an improved version in more villages in September.
We provided the workbooks to our 7th and 8th grade students because the 9th graders are currently back in school, studying for their graduation exam. Here we see the 9th graders of Sebela studiously focused on a chemistry lesson.
