Whole Child Model: Education, Health & Engagement

For over a decade School-to-School International (STS) has implemented and refined an approach that embodies our founding principle: In order for students to thrive, they must have their basic needs fulfilled. We have implemented activities from all three components of the Whole Child Model — Education, Health, and Community Engagement — reaching over 3,700 students in Guinea in the 2014-15 school year alone. Our program covers a broad set of interventions, including activity-based teaching and learning, a girls’ scholarship program, construction of school wells, quality health and wellness education, improved school sanitation, parent and community involvement, and empowerment of school management.

Teachers’ Skills Reinforcement Workshop

This year we completed our first ever teachers’ skills reinforcement workshops. These trainings aim to reinforce teachers’ mastery of the subjects they teach as well as their pedagogical techniques and familiarity with the curriculum. The STS/Guinea team reports that these reinforcement workshops were well-appreciated by teachers, directors and local administrators at the prefecture level in terms of both the academic and pedagogical competencies addressed.

Teacher Coaching & Monitoring

STS continued implementing our teacher coaching program since our last report. Our coaches provide continuous support and capacity building for teachers to guide their implementation of new techniques learned in STS’s teacher trainings. For the first time, we have included School Principals in this process, and will be comparing their observations with those of the STS teacher coaches.

Evaluation of Classroom Gender & Equity Trainings

At the beginning of the school year, we trained teachers in our partner schools on the techniques for creating an equitable classroom for girls and boys. During this training, teachers created personal action plans for how they wanted to tackle equity in the classroom for the coming school year. We revisited those teachers at the end of the school year to reflect on the implementation of their action plans. We will have a more concrete report once the completed monitoring tools have been scanned and analyzed.

Evaluation of Community Girls’ Education Action Plans

At the beginning of this school year, we worked with our partner communities to discuss the importance of girls’ education and community’s role in girls’ success in school. Following that training, each community created an action plan for supporting girls’ education. The community members came together again at the end of the school year to reflect on their progress over the course of the year.

Girls’ Scholarship Distribution

Through a grant from the Alcoa Foundation, STS selects primary school girls to receive scholarships based on need, academic achievement, and regular school attendance. This school year we have continued distributing scholarships to recipients on a monthly basis. The scholarships, in the form of a monthly donation of a 50kg sack of rice, directly impact the recipient girls and their families. We have also witnessed that impact radiate across the girls’ communities. We have continued and completed our scholarship distribution for the school year during this reporting period.

Well Construction

Through a grant from the Alcoa Foundation, STS completed the construction and inauguration of one well at Katakody school. The well will serve as a clean water source for children and others in the community.

• STS WCM Report_June 2016 (PDF)
  

WHOLE CHILD MODEL: GUINEA, WEST AFRICA

PROJECT REPORT – MARCH 2016

For over a decade School-to-School International (STS) has implemented and refined an approach that embodies our founding principle: In order for students to thrive, they must have their basic needs fulfilled. We have implemented activities from all three components of the Whole Child Model — Education, Health, and Community Engagement — reaching over 3,700 students in Guinea in the 2014-15 school year alone. Our program covers a broad set of interventions, including activity-based teaching and learning, a girls’ scholarship program, construction of school wells, quality health and wellness education, improved school sanitation, parent and community involvement, and empowerment of school management.

STS has been hard at work this school year implementing activities under the multiple intervention areas of our Whole Child Model.

Teacher Training & Community Engagement Workshops. Since our last report in December 2015, we have completed all of our planned teacher training and community engagement workshops. Teachers from our partner schools were trained on active learning instructional techniques in both reading and mathematics. STS also led workshops with community members on the importance of girls’ education. In this workshop, each community developed an action plan of steps for supporting girls’ education in their community. Finally, teachers and school administrators attended workshops on the importance of gender equity and developed personal action plans for making their classrooms more equitable.

Girls’ Scholarship Distribution. Through a grant from the Alcoa Foundation, STS selects primary school girls to receive scholarships based on need, academic achievement, and regular school attendance. This school year we have continued distributing scholarships to recipients on a monthly basis. The scholarships, in the form of a monthly donation of a 50kg sack of rice, directly impact the recipient girls and their families. We have also witnessed that impact radiate across the girls’ communities.

Teacher Coaching. STS’s teacher coaching program began in early March and will continue throughout the rest of the school year. Our coaches provide continuous support and capacity building for teachers to support them in implementing the new the techniques they learned in STS’s teacher trainings.

Well Construction. Through a grant from the Alcoa Foundation, STS is building one school well this year to serve as a clean water source for children and others in the community. Well construction began in early March.

Presentation of Results to International Education Community. We are pleased to report that STS staff presented on our Whole Child Model work in Guinea at the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES). We were excited to share our experiences and lessons learned over the past three years of working in Guinea.

Monitoring & Evaluation. STS has worked to finalize a monitoring and evaluation plan for the rest of the school year that incorporates fidelity of implementation (FOI) research. FOI allows implementers to measure the extent to which interventions are actually being implemented as designed.

• STS WCM Report_March 2016 (PDF)