Goal One: Provide an excellent Christian education for the children of Ndola, Zambia.
Beginning in 2008, Zambian and American educators have worked together to develop a comprehensive curriculum that meets the needs of our students. Further, we have drawn upon research on effective instruction in an effort to establish teaching methods that focus on (a) increasing student engagement through active responding, (b) increasing the clarity of content presentation using explicit instruction, and (c) using data to guide instruction and provide accountability.Future setps
During the next year we are working to "institutionalize" these teaching methods through a series of handbooks and videos. Additionally, the development of a distance support system that draws upon the expertise of our volunteers is currently underway.Goal Two: Provide professional development program for teachers
Unlike the United States where teachers often complete 4-6 years of training, Zambian teachers are often given only cursory training in both content and pedagogy. In the poorest areas of Zambia, teachers may have only a high school education, with no formal teacher training -- making the teachers of the most needy children often under-equipped for the job.Two things are clear in the teacher training research literature. First, children with excellent teachers generally make more progress than children with less well trained teachers. Second, teachers continue to engage in the teaching behaviors that helped them get through their first year of teaching - whether effective or ineffecive. While these findings may be intuitive, they nonetheless present difficulties for any school.
In 2008-2009 a series of teacher trainings were conducted in the Nkwazi Compound. These trainings were presented in person as well as through distance technologies (i.e., DVDs). The focus of the trainings was on teacher presentation skills that increase student achievement.
