While the COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented disruption to teaching and learning, it has also shone a bright light on the core strength of education worldwide: the leadership, creativity and ingenuity of teachers. That’s why the theme of World Teachers’ Day on 5 October this year was “Teachers: Leading in crisis, reimagining the future”.

To coincide with World Teachers’ Day and explore this theme, the Teacher Task Force organized a series of regional discussions on the key role of leadership in solving problems during the COVID-19 pandemic and strengthening the resilience of education systems. Building on the regional meetings in May and June 2020 on distance teaching and the return to school, five discussions were held:

• Arab States (Arabic, English and French): 8 October
• Asia and Pacific (English): 8 October
• Latin America (Spanish and English): 7 October
• Sub-Saharan Africa (English): 7 October
• Sub-Saharan Africa (French): 8 October

These meetings gave representatives from a wide range of countries an opportunity to highlight the way teachers have shown leadership not only in their teaching but also right across the school and in partnership with parents and the community.

The need to organize and deliver remote learning during lockdowns, for example, drew many ingenious responses from teachers. In Rwanda, teachers wrote scripts for and taught radio lessons. In both Rwanda and Lebanon, teachers taught television lessons.  

Where no technology was available, teachers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo visited pupils door-to-door to deposit and collect school work.

Social media came to the fore in several countries. Teachers in Pakistan started informal WhatsApp classes. In Bhutan, teachers used WeChat, WhatsApp and Telegram Messenger for teaching.

Teachers also demonstrated considerable leadership in their roles as front line workers in the fight against COVID-19, raising general awareness about strict hygiene protocols and ensuring these were respected. In Senegal, teachers took ownership of the design and radio broadcasting of preventive messages against COVID-19. In Bhutan, teachers even repaired fittings and built taps.

School leaders have been instrumental in showing leadership and mentoring other teachers. In Senegal, school leaders helped teachers to produce digital resources, jointly with inspectors and trainers. In Thailand, school leaders encouraged teachers to develop computer programmes for online learning management. In China, school leaders led initiatives emphasizing researching at home, reading, and group study, involving interactions between teachers, parents and students.

Participants in the meetings also explained how school leaders and teachers were working with communities and parents to ensure the continuation of remote teaching and learning, and provide a safe and healthy learning environment.

In the Gambia, for example, community members were trained along with teachers and students to provide leadership and help ensure a safe return to school. In the Balata Refugee Camp in Palestine, students are involved in decision-making through a children’s parliament, working in partnership with teachers and parent coordinators.

The meetings developed a set of recommendations to support teacher leadership both during the COVID-19 crisis and in the longer-term to build better school and teacher resilience.  They included:

• Teachers’ leadership role should be formalized in teacher policies, education sector plans, professional development frameworks and salaries.
• Teachers should be encouraged, supported and empowered to embrace their leadership roles.
• Teachers’ leadership roles should be acknowledged by giving them greater professional autonomy.
• Teachers’ leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic should be acknowledged and rewarded including through incentives and career paths and structures.
• Holistic support for teachers, with an increased focus on their psychological and socio-emotional well-being, is the key to fostering a leadership mindset.

Read the full report on the Teacher Task Force Regional Meetings to mark World Teachers’ Day, 5 October 2020.

Even before governments across the world closed schools in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, continuing education was a major challenge for refugee or internally displaced children. During 2020’s lockdowns, children in refugee camps have been at especially high risk of missing out on remote education due to lack of access to the necessary technology.

As schools reopen around the world, more attention is needed to the particular challenges faced by teachers in refugee camps.

Ja Aung is a middle-school teacher in Hpung Lung Yang [GSA1] camp for internally displaced persons in Kachin State, Myanmar. The camp’s plywood and sheet-metal structures house around two thousand people forced from their homes by fighting between the Kachin Independence Army and Tatmadaw, the armed forces of Myanmar. Before the pandemic, she reflected on the difficulties of her role:

“The biggest challenge that I face as a teacher is communication”, says Ja Aung. “As the schools where I teach are in the border areas between China and Myanmar, students speak different Kachin dialects and accents, not just the common Kachin language, Jinghpaw.

Ja Aung is not alone – communication is one of the four main challenges pinpointed in Save the Children’s report Hear It From The Teachers: Getting Refugee Children Back To Learning. In a survey, 61% of refugee teachers employed by the charity reported issues with some children not speaking the language of instruction in the classroom.

As the report explains, studies suggest that the most effective way to integrate pupils who do not speak the majority language is to incorporate some lessons in their mother tongue, rather than immerse them in the new language. But that can be challenging when children in a class speak multiple languages.

How to teach in a crisis

Training is another challenge the report highlights: “A lack of effective teacher professional development is a key issue for teachers of refugees around the globe”.

Ja Aung concurs: “I am lucky that I received 9-month teacher training,” she says, referring to a unique pre-service teaching program, called the New Generation Teacher Training College which is a partnership between the local Diocesan Commission of Education and Jesuit Refugee Service.

Aung spent seven months studying an intensive teacher preparation curriculum and had an additional two month placement at a local school.

 “I found that the teachers who did not receive any teacher training or trained for short term such as one week faced many challenges, as they did not get a chance to learn skills for teaching such as elements of pedagogy like school and classroom management.

“It would be good if there will be ongoing teacher training program for all teachers, Ja Aung adds.

Recognising the need for teacher training, the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies developed an open-source package: Training for Primary School Teachers in Crisis Contexts comprises four modules, with a participant handbook and facilitator’s guide available online.

This package underpins initiatives such as the New Generation Teacher Training College, as well as Teachers for Teachers, run by Columbia University with various partners, which offers services including peer coaching and mobile mentoring via WhatsApp and a private Facebook group.

The modules cover subjects including classroom management, child development, lesson planning, using local resources in the classroom, positive discipline, identifying signs of distress in children, and how teachers can look after their own well-being.

When asked what she would especially like to learn more about, “child psychology” is the first topic Ja Aung mentions. She already uses techniques such as building a child’s self-confidence by hanging their drawings on the wall, and scheduling “singing and dancing at the last period on every Friday… I believe this boosts their well-being.”

Ja Aung’s interest is shared by the teachers surveyed for Save The Children’s report: three-quarters of respondents drew attention to students’ psychosocial wellbeing as a priority, with some children being quiet and distant while others are hostile or hyperactive.

“Teachers regularly reported that they needed to provide refugee students with targeted support to better understand what was behind their behaviors, the report notes.

Keeping children in class

The final challenge identified by Save The Children is that many refugee children drop out of school to look after siblings or earn an income. UNHCR figures suggest that while 77% of primary-aged refugee children were in school in 2019, this dropped to just 31% at secondary level.

Refugee girls are especially at risk of dropping out because of early marriage, pregnancy, or parental concerns about mixing with boys. One estimate, based on UNHCR statistics, is that half the refugee girls who were in secondary school before COVID-19 are unlikely to return when schools reopen.

While getting vulnerable children back to school is currently a challenge across the world, these figures point to the need for more research into the particular difficulties in refugee contexts.

Photo credit: INEE