Whenever anyone masters a new skill, there is a tendency to forget how difficult it was to acquire in the first place. While photographic records may immortalize the grass stains, skinned knees, and tears that were part and parcel of learning to ride a bicycle, the breeze you feel on your face once riding has become second nature can help to erase your recollection of how physically and emotionally intense the learning process truly was.
I sensed a similar phenomenon at work in the cases of Ms. Nanoe, Mr. Kollie, and Mr. Kolleh, three veteran Liberian teachers who enthusiastically endorsed the “new reading” being taught in schools supported by USAID and the Ministry of Education through the Liberia Teacher Training Program (LTTP). They made it sound so easy—as though once the new curriculum had arrived in the schools, the result was that children would read fluently. To better understand the learning process, I sat down with Christiana Davies, the LTTP reading coach with responsibility for schools in the Kokoyah District of Bong County.
Teacher training workshops and new learning materials alone won’t work
The take-home message from our conversation was clear: the curriculum was only the tip of the iceberg. Grade 1 to 3 teachers at LTTP schools also attend intensive training workshops geared toward imparting both content knowledge and a set of practical skills related to effective reading instruction.
Sometimes, long gaps between training sessions weaken newly acquired skills. This is where a curriculum based on explicit instruction comes in.
Those two inputs alone—training and lesson plans—will not immediately produce effective teachers. It takes time and repetition to fully master the principles of reading instruction, thoroughly internalize new techniques, and completely uproot any lingering bad habits. The odds that teachers will improve from mediocre to effective are greatly increased if someone can quickly and consistently reinforce their good instructional practice—and correct bad instructional practice.LTTP provides research-based instructional materials for teachers to use in their classrooms. As they deliver the daily lesson plans prescribed by the teachers’ guides, teachers are effectively reinforcing the principles and techniques in which they were trained.
Coaches are the heart of the program
Under LTTP, that “someone” is a reading coach. Coaches are assigned a “cluster” of schools to visit on a rotating basis throughout each month. In addition to providing instructional support to the teachers and principals at those schools, the coaches attend parent-teacher association meetings, help organize reading competitions, and host call-in radio shows to raise the listeners’ awareness of the powerful role parents and community members can play in supporting school-based reading improvement efforts.
When I asked Christiana to identify which of those she thought might be the single most important factor in the program’s success she demurred: “The program cannot really work in a school if the teacher is not committed. If the teacher is not committed, a lot of things will go wrong. Students will not have time to get the skills or even read. Most of them will not be able to read well, because my one-time visit at the school cannot cover up for the 19 days that the teacher has with his students.”
Ensuring that teachers are fully committed to effectively implementing the program is a critical responsibility, which is why Christiana and her colleagues are really the heart and soul of the reading intervention. They are the nexus at which the LTTP’s combination of incentives, mentorship, and accountability come together in a practical way.
Good progress to date, with better to come
When I first spoke with Christiana before the start of the 2013-14 school year she agreed that LTTP students were performing well.
“Some of the children in my neighborhood go to non-LTTP schools,” she said, and “sometimes I’ll use the project materials to assess them. The kids in non-LTTP schools are trying hard, but I can tell that we have the kids that are reading better.”
But she also believed that greater strides could be made if contact hours between coaches and teachers were increased. “LTTP, along with USAID and the Ministry of Education, will do all it can do to make sure Liberian kids know how to read. More time spent with kids, more awareness among parents, more reading competitions—all of these [would] be of great help to the kids.”
It turns out Christiana is now getting the chance to put that assertion to the test. When a group of roughly 300 new schools joined LTTP in September 2013, the Ministry of Education took over primary responsibility for providing ongoing support to the original group of nearly 800 LTTP schools. (LTTP will still provide refresher trainings.) Now, rather than supporting 12 schools and 44 teachers every month, Christiana has responsibility for 6 schools and 18 teachers. Because her new schools are both fewer in number and closer in proximity than the ones she served previously, she expects she’ll be able to visit each school either two or three times each month. The program research in Liberia suggests that the increased level of scrutiny, encouragement, and technical mentoring that Christiana will be able to provide for each school and teacher should accelerate the rate of reading improvement; when final results are collected in 2015, we’ll see if that expectation has been confirmed.
In the next post we’ll take a look at a typical day for Christiana—and see why letting Coaches concentrate on fewer schools is a good idea.
This blog is part of a series about the Liberia Reading Campaign. Read also: