By Sebastien Carrier, Ph.D. | Program Director
As the COVID-19 crisis has deepened around the world, Stepping Stones is focused on keeping our students and volunteers connected while prioritizing health and safety. To respond to this situation, we have launched a Home Classroom Program in February 2020, providing online English lessons to disadvantaged children in China. To ensure the good quality of the teaching, we have developed a tailored curriculum and maintained the class size very small, with one volunteer teaching to around five students in their homes.
Since the program began in February this year, over 225 volunteers have joined the program, providing 2,480 lessons to around 1,454 students.
To assess the value and impact of the Home Classroom Program while it is still ongoing, we conducted a mid-term evaluation. The evaluation consisted of an online survey questionnaire completed by 237 beneficiaries’ parents, who answered a variety of questions regarding their attitude towards English, online teaching, and Stepping Stones’ program, as well as their children’s educational needs. We are pleased to report that parents have expressed a very positive attitude towards online teaching and our program. More than 93% of parents think the program is “good” or “very good,” and of those whose children were already attending other online programs, 71.9% considered the Home Classroom Program as superior to other programs.
We are very encouraged by the results of this evaluation, which suggest that our program has a positive impact on the English education of our beneficiaries. The prospect that a program that we started as a temporary response to the coronavirus crisis in February may become one of our permanent long-term programs is definitely exciting! The full impact evaluation report can be found here.
We have been humbled by the many volunteers who have risen to the occasion and helped us provide English classes to hundreds of children in rural communities. Thanks to their generosity, students have been able to continue to learn, despite the Covid-19 crisis, and have acquired a variety of new skills through the unique process of online learning.
In the Fall 2020 semester, we are planning to expand our Home Classroom Program in order to reach more disadvantaged and rural students in China. Our aim is to create more opportunities for them to learn, practice and improve their English.
Read more about our programs on our website.
Thank you all for your support!
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