July 9, 2015
When I chanced upon Helps Education Fund on Pinterest in 2013 while looking for literacy activities, I got excited and immediately emailed them. At that time, Helps Education Fund was offering an online opportunity for teachers to become certified Helps Trainer. Helps stands for Helping Early Literacy with Practice Strategies, a program designed to improve reading fluency among early readers. The TFFT Teachers Training Program invests a lot of effort on literacy initiatives. In East Africa (composed of Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda), less than one third of pupils enrolled in third grade possess basic literacy and numeracy skills. Among pupils in Class 7, one in five do not have Class 2 level literacy and numeracy competencies.
That inquiry to Dr. John C. Begeny, founder and director of Helps Education Fund, was followed by many emails and Skype calls that spanned 2 years discussing the prospect of collaboration. In May 2015, this collaboration finally came to fruition. Dr. Begeny came to Arusha, Tanzania under the sponsorship of The Foundation for Tomorrow to train teachers and heads of schools on the Helps Program and Systems Oriented Plan for Academic Achievement (SOPAA) – a systems-level approach to making schools more effective and efficient in assisting academically struggling students.
Twenty-two teachers from selected government and private schools attended the Helps Training on May 18-19. The bulk of the 2 days were devoted to training the teachers on how to implement the core procedures of the Helps program. Ample time was provided for them to learn how to conduct oral reading fluency assessment and timed readings. Teachers teamed up and alternated pretending as teachers and students during the practice sessions. A session was also set specifically for teachers to identify challenges in the implementation of the program in their contexts and how to mitigate them.
On May 21-22, 37 heads of schools from different schools and education officials from the district education office attended the SOPAA training. These two days found the participants learning about TAPS (Targeted Assistance Program for Students) and how important the presence of a well-coordinated/structured system is to the effective functioning of a school and most critical to assisting student learning. Dr. Begeny introduced tools that the participants can adapt as well as help them reflect on their respective system’s strengths and areas of improvement.
Helps Education Fund believe in collaborative partnerships and we at TFTT are also strong believers on the power of collaboration to achieve common good. In total, 59 teachers and heads of schools coming from 25 different schools were trained as a result of this collaboration. TFFT would be conducting follow-ups with the schools in the next two months to check the implementation of their action plans. Helps Education Fund through Dr. John Begeny commits to continue supporting this collaboration and we can never be happier with this. We look forward to working with them again in the years to come!
