The poor life of the (Cerak) village people evokes their deprivation and backwardness in literacy and education.  The work and income of these people is limited to livestock.  Just as men are busy shepherding their flocks and women are busy milking sheep and doing housework, their children are also accustomed to this profession.  Among the nearly 200 people, only one person has been able to complete university education up to the bachelor’s degree.  If I talk to a man of this village about the value of education, it will be a waste of time for him, while if we haggle over the price of a sheep, we will have a lot of time.  Certainly, the reason for the lack of awareness of the people of this village was the remoteness and deprivation of government services.

But in this opportunity, when all the children who left school between the ages of 10 and 15 of this village were able to be included in the local education program, people’s attitudes towards the importance of literacy have changed many times.  After 7 months, the students of (Cerak) village in ALC class have a good relationship with basic words and sentence formation.  Sometimes they write their memories and sometimes they show pictures in the class activities that would have remained unknown in their minds for the rest of their lives if they didn’t have the opportunity to learn.  Because unheard and unsaid traditions.  In the memoirs of the students of this class, deep and valuable texts have been written that reading and seeing them is like discovering historical inscriptions.  Among these works, Fawzia wrote: “The day I came from school, I went to the shepherd and when I came home, I ate my food from the shepherd. I sewed fancywork. After I left home, I went to the shepherd again, and then I came to home my father’s said, my daughter did you read your book. Behind the hidden two lines of Fawzia’s memory, one can find the deprivation of a rural girl and at the same time her strong interest in studies.  He shepherds, sews with a needle a “Graff” and writes his homework; The courage of a woman.  On the other page, Tahir wrote: “I said that I will go to school tomorrow. I thought, what is the point of going to school? I said, “Wow, school is a place where every person goes to become an artist.”  “The child of art should revive the name of the father.”  These messages carry motivation and hope.  When we see children who, at the first opportunity to get to know words, use them in their daily life, the greatness of knowledge is depicted.

 Let’s help children on the way to knowledge and work hard for their future!!

Employee of (RRSWO): Ali Eshraq (Teacher Trainer)

RRSWO employees at any point in Daikundi, For the purpose of better education and Decrees of illiteracy!

Since the goals of education and training is learning and teaching, there is no doubt that these two can be achieved with strict and continuous monitoring and basic guidance of education and training.
For this purpose and to encourage more people to learn and teach, the field employees of (RRSWO) without interruption and in a regular plan and system, in all parts of Daikundi province, they continue to monitor the local classes established by this organization.
Employees of this organization, in coordination with the Education directorate of Daikundi Province, will soon finish the seventh round of monitoring that they started a few days ago in ten districts of Daikundi, including Nili.
In these supervisory periods; From the presence of students in the class, observance of hygiene, suitable place for teaching, how the teaching system is used by the teachers, observing the timetable and lesson plan, management and organizing of classes, the interest of students, the role of parents in the promotion of classes, the presence of teachers and students, changes will be made in relation to the first round of supervision, review of the attendance book, educational progress and administrative documents of the class, noting existing problems and other subjects that play a role in the improvement of teaching and monitoring, and such necessary guidelines are provided to the teachers in order to improve teaching and learning.
RRSWO is committed providing quality educational services for illiterate children in all parts of Daikundi province, which does not spare any effort to achieve this goal of “education and upbringing”. it will use all the human resources and educational facilities that the organization has.

“Education is the chief defense of every nation” Edmund Burke

During many decades of war in Afghanistan many development sectors are damaged particularly the education sector. As a result of it Afghanistan education sector has been dis-melted including the education system. The teachers of Afghanistan are facing lots of problem in ensuring the quality education due to lack of receiving suitable training.
The quality of education depends on the effective teaching learning. This effective teaching learning also depends on the teaching capability of the teachers. A teacher can be capable through receiving some suitable training related to subject based training, classroom management, application of appropriate teaching method and techniques, developing and using conducive teaching learning materials etc.

RRSWO believes the teacher’s capability is the first and foremost condition to make a befitting nation through providing quality education. To increase the teachers’ capability and competency of RRSWO teachers this training worked as a blue print. The contents of this training are very elementary issues for teachers to know and practice along with for new and inexperienced teachers. This training helps to learn what to teach and how to teach as well as how to create learning atmosphere in a schools through different co-curricular activities in link with MoE guidelines.

Training Summary

Course Objectives

During the training designing, some specific objectives were selected for the course.
after successful completion of the course, participants would be able to:

• Define the concept of education, aims and its importance
• Explain types of education
• Explore general idea regarding education
• Describe objective of Community Based School in Afghanistan
• Explain types of community based school and their characteristics
• Describe Characteristics, attributes and  responsibilities of  teachers
• Understand active Learning and its role
• Create Fear free educational environment
• Define Child psychology
• Describe teaching methods and types
• Acquainted the participants with  teaching techniques and teaching aids
• Explain classroom based teaching
• Make acquainted the participants with school discipline
• Explore  the knowledge and skills of participants  with co-curricular activities
• Increase the knowledge  and skills of participants to prepare lesson plan
• Delivery of quality teaching process.
• Introducing UNICEF pre-packaged education kits and its usage.

Major Contents: 

During the course, the following major contents were delivered to participants:

• CBE project in Daikundi
• PSEA
• Child protection
• Education concept and its aims
• Objective of Community Based School in Afghanistan
• Teachers Characteristics, attributes and responsibilities
• Active Learning concept and application
• Child psychology
• Teaching methods
• Teaching techniques and aids
• classroom based teaching
• discipline  meaning as a whole
• evaluation meaning
• lesson plan and its steps

Inauguration of the Training program

The training program was inaugurated at 09:00 am on 3 October 2022. The sectorial departments and governmental departments, UNICEF zonal office and other community elders were participated.

Methodology:

Participatory learning methodologies were used throughout the workshop. During the course facilitation, the following methods were used:

Lecture followed by discussions, brainstorming, exercise, practicing co-curricular activities, practical demonstration, role-play, storytelling, question and answer, group work and presentation. In the CBE teachers training key techniques is that Facilitators first explained the issues with practical example and demonstrate where needed and then ask participants to do accordingly”.

Materials

The materials used for the training was guidelines developed by Ministry of Education like InSet 1, orientation to teaching guide, CBE policy etc and materials related to PSEA and chaild protection development by UNICEF. During the training facilitators also used other training materials such as; Text books, sticks, alphabet charts, number chart, calendar, word chart, flip chart, white board,  marker etc.

Training participant:

In order to increase the capacity of the teachers, as per project plan we organized 17 days training (3 days orientation and 14 days INSET-I) for 402 teachers (338 Newly recruited, 41 teachers recruited by UNICEF for the existing classes who have not received the training and as per UNICEF request 23 teachers from UNICEF IGA classes).

Course facilitator

Trainings were facilitated by RRSWO’s master and teacher trainers. In order to have a quality training the social mobilizers were also supported as co facilitators.  Facilitation language was in both Pashto and Dari languages. There were 18 trainers for conducting the 9 batches training.

Training Process

Every day the training session started at 08.30 am in the morning and continued up to 03:30 pm in the afternoon. There was one-hour break for lunch and prayer from 12:30 – 01:30 p.m. The participants had also 15 minutes tea break in the morning at 10:30 am and 15 minutes in the afternoon at 02:30 pm. In the beginning of every day’s sessions, 30 minutes were allowed for review & reflection on previous day’s learning.

At the end of the every session facilitator’s review the session through questions and answers whether participants were understand the sessions. Particular training mostly focused on practical aspect, to make the participants more proactive, exercise followed by the discussions, group work, plenary and practical demonstration and feedback were the key techniques of this training.

Giving feedback and follow up support was provided throughout the training process by master trainer as an observer.

Pre-test and post test Result analysis

Evaluation seeks to understand how much participants have really learned as a result of having attended the workshop. The assessment is usually closely related to the objectives of the training. Pre-test & post-tests tend to be one of the preferred methodologies for assessing the degree of learning that has taken place in the “classroom” setting.

The comparison and analysis of the Pre-test and Post-test shows the following result:

The purpose of these tests were to assess the effectiveness of the training events carried out for new hired teachers.

The analysis of the tests shows that the training has brought about massive changes in knowledge and awareness of the participants. The effects of workshop have been impressive; it is clear that these improvements refer to the training design, sustainability, training focus and well-management.

Remarks by the participants

• They were very much happy and told they learned many things.
• Most of the teachers shared that is very much worthy course for us.
• The majority of participants said they would recommend this training to their colleagues.
• Participants reported an increased awareness regarding PSEA and their role in preventing, responding and coordinating implementation plans.
• The participants were satisfied with the trainings and wanted to be supervised and guided and also follow up support
• As the participants suggested that the future training should focus on learning process and learning Assessment Techniques.
• Most of the teachers acknowledged that this training was necessary for them as newly hired teachers.
• In future trainings, more practical topics should be included and audio and visual aids such as videos and educational clips should be used.

The above feedback represents a variety of perspectives regarding what was experienced as most useful during the training. The reasons for these multiple perspectives are due to two main factors. First of all, different teachers have different needs and are at different stages of awareness. The second contributing factor is that participants have different learning styles. This is an indication that the learning events were designed with diverse learner needs in mind.

Closing Ceremony:

In concluding session was presided over by Mr. Esa Firoozkohi and some of the participants put their remarks and feelings on the overall achievement from the course. Some of the participants stated that they enjoyed the learning process which was participatory. They also mentioned that the course was useful for them they would be able to apply the course learning during their teachings in the CBS schools. Finally, facilitators thank the participants and closed.

The training officially ended by giving a training closing remark on Wednesday 19^th October 2022.

We still didn’t finish the supervision process in Hijdi Class of Nili district center, that the thin and cute hands of a nine years old Fareshta and seven years old Safiya were raising and lowering to show up their talent than other classmates on exercising lessons. It was not easy to hear their voice properly because of 32 others talks. Fareshta and Safiya were sitting near each other in the last row of the class and waiting impatiently for the random turn that might be given. everyone was interested to answer our questions with smile on lips. Classmates were encouraging (applause by clapping) the student to was giving right answers. This motivated all to be ready of answering and taking turns. We were in hurry for the reason of lack of time and to supervise other classes as well. One hour and half was spent to monitor and evaluate the students and left the classes while there were still student’s raised hands.
We said goodbye to the teacher and students. A student said: it is time for break. The teacher let them to have their fun. All the students left the class during the break except Fareshta and Safiya who were following us with their nice and innocent looks and nods to tell us something.
I asked them: why don’t you play?
They both answered with the same voice: Dear Teacher! We want to sing song (Taraneh).
– Well Done! Why didn’t you sing in the class?
– Sir! You didn’t let us.
– Ummm, well, do you sing here or in the classroom?
– We sang here.
– Ok, then start. I told them that will also take a video from them to show to the students of other classes.
– They agreed.
They started singing. Honestly, I didn’t understand their childish accent completely until they reached “My homeland, is tired of Cruelty”. Here, one could no longer understand anything, his catchy voice, childish look and sense had given these few words a special strength and solidity. Even these innocent children know that: my homeland is tired of the cruelty. After repeating the phrase: “My homeland…” (Sarzamin E man) they finished their song. And I wanted to share this song with you.

Written by: Samiullah Wahaj