When Alice first began to attend our Impact One meetings, she would sit quietly and let her father do most of the talking. Her dad, Matthews, is the founder and director of Twin Palm Community School, as well as the pastor of the church where the school meets. He is charismatic and confident, so it was easy for Alice to hide in his shadow.
Alice had been thrown into a role she wasn’t really equipped for, or even excited about. The school was in desperate need of teachers, and her dad asked her to help out for a while. She dutifully said yes, and was given a class to oversee.
Many of the community schools in our network operate like a family business. Siblings, children, and parents all do their part to help the school function day after day on a shoe-string budget. While the solidarity is admirable, many of those recruited feel unprepared for what they are being asked to do - just like Alice.
After some time though, Alice discovered she liked teaching. She was inspired by the opportunity to impact her students, but she still lacked confidence and didn’t know how to teach effectively.
Recognizing her genuine desire and true potential, Alice was identified as an excellent candidate for our teacher mentoring program. Starting last year, our team of education mentors began to visit her class weekly, where they would encourage her with new strategies to teach reading and shift the learning towards more interactive methods. As she practiced what she was learning in our trainings and received one-on-one coaching and encouragement, her class of 2nd graders began to undergo a massive transformation.
Education Mentor, Chibwe, visits Alice each week to observe lessons and give feedback on the performance
In the 2022 reading assessments conducted by our team, only 15% of Alice’s class was able to read simple words. But as a result of her improved teaching methods, 92% of her student were reading words by the middle of this year.
Beaming with confidence, Alice has become an enthusiastic teacher. She gets all of her students involved in the lessons and is seeing phenomenal results. And she doesn’t just shine in the classroom. Just this month, she attended a meeting at our library and was one of the most active participants, giving ideas for how educational technologies could be effectively introduced in her classroom to maximize learning.
Alice’s life has been transformed. She has discovered her love for teaching, and is starting a distance learning course at the end of this year to formalize her passion with a degree in education.
Alice says, “For me, as a teacher, I’ve been impacted a lot. And that impact I got, I have also impacted the children.”
The transformation of a teacher overflows into all of the students she interacts with from here on out. By equipping teachers, we are giving countless children a life-changing education that helps them discover their own passions and be equipped with the skills to follow and fulfill them.
Our model of one-on-one coaching has been monumental in the transformation of Alice’s students. Our team invested time, guidance, and loving encouragement into Alice’s teaching, and as a result, she has impacted her students for a lifetime.
Our goal for 2024 is to provide one-on-one coaching to 20 teachers to help them reach this level of excellence. Just imagine, when 20 teachers are transformed, they can impact 700 kids with a life-changing education!