A million radios will not engage learners and this is why?

Over 85% of learners around the globe have been affected due to lockdown. Many of these learners are in Uganda residing in rural communities. Their setting makes it difficult to access the global interventions on platforms like Zoom, Facebook, Google scholar, what’s-up, etc. which use the internet.

Now, the government has responded positively by hatching interventions to engage the learners. However, a majority of the children in rural areas have not benefited from them due to the following challenges:

First, the student workbooks were not enough for all the learners. They could not as well afford to photocopy as advised by the Local distributors.

Secondly, those who got the opportunity to get the workbooks could not read and comprehend for self-study just as most of their parents and guardians couldn’t read.

The radios used didn’t have frequencies in most of the remote areas of Uganda besides the unconducive time of airing the lessons out.

The teachers on the radios were not prepared or trained ably to conduct lessons on the radios hence less engaging and comfortable to stimulate learning.

Therefore, the above interventions could not work to fully engage the learners in this lockdown as a teacher would and this is why radios and TVs are an unnecessary cost

The structural limitation.

Education is structured interactively. A teacher adjusts a few things as the lesson continues depending on the mood and objectives.

The management of the lesson is shared by both the children and the teacher in learner-centered teaching. Children’s interests and input are incorporated to affect learning. This relationship enables the teacher to monitor, support, and reinforce the learners.

Our education heavily relies on the teacher observing student traits, emotional wellbeing, progress at work, checking for understanding, and skills development. It’s only then that learning gets differentiated for each individual.

Learners can ask questions for clarity, roleplay, have fun, and be called to order when a teacher is present. Without her, environmental or individual distractions eat up the learner.

Suggestions.

Currently, we are engaging learners while strictly observing health guidelines within the community. it’s possible to make a follow-up on the students and address all their academic needs if a teacher is on the ground.

Group learners in each class and let them be attended to by their teachers. The advantages of groups are that you can develop student leadership, peer teaching, empathy, and responsibility amongst the learners.

A teacher moving through the groups can connect with the parents to concretize their relationship, develop and restore trust and hope among them.

She’s able to identify the challenges affecting her learners and address them. She’s able to sensitize and offer support to the parents in a crisis like this.

School dropout can be avoided if a teacher conducts home visits because, her physical presence in a student’s life inspires, hope, enthusiasm, and resilience in the face of challenges.

Way forward

We can use the budget for the radios to buy PPEs for all the teachers and learners and get them back to their school communities.

We can use this money to build teacher quarters so that all teachers reside in their schools.

We can have children study in shifts to maximize the infrastructure available as we observe the social distance.

We can build more classrooms or buy tents according to the need for space for each school.

We can print more instructional materials only if the teachers will be in the community to engage with learners.

We can use this money to further train or motivate teachers and keep them engaged to seal the chances of forgetting the content and pedagogical practices.

Teachers back in their school communities can help to impactfully engage learners and revert dropout rates, pregnancies, violence, and disease. That’s why we need them back not a million radios.