Jill Hudson was one of the first volunteers recruited through the VSO and National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) partnership. She volunteered in the Oshana region of Namibia, a predominantly rural area with many isolated communities and schools and the lowest standard of education in the whole country. Jill has been working with school leaders to address some of the issues behind poor quality teaching in a bid to improve pupils experience of school. Here she reflects on her experience.
Background
In the UK I am a head teacher at Pegasus Primary School in Oxford but am seconded for half my time to the Oxford Excellence Cluster programme and behavioural improvement programme for a group of schools in an area of deprivation in Oxford. So there are remarkable similarities with the work I am doing in Namibia.
Assessing the situation
When I came I knew I was here for a short time and that working with individual teachers was not going to make much difference and that working with the head teachers and the heads of departments would probably be the key to improving standards in the long term. I decided the single most important thing I could do was train them on lesson observation skills and on working on their staff development skills.
When I arrived I did a lot of observation and I had not heard a single word of praise for any learner in my first two weeks of being here. And it’s the same for the staff, teachers who teach well…no one says well done, they just get told what they haven’t done properly. But my experience in the UK has really taught me that you get more if you focus on the positives rather than the negatives.
Tackling the challenges
The main issue is that they are only 17 years out of independence and most teachers were bought up under an apartheid system, so the teachers teaching in these schools had a very patchy education themselves. It would be awful to suddenly expect them to provide an education they haven’t lived through themselves: you have to really experience good quality teaching and learning to understand how exciting it is.
Back in the UK I do a lot of training as part of my job as cluster coordinator, but also I see my job as a head teacher as training my staff - motivating, encouraging and enthusing and giving them new ideas about new ways of doing things. That’s translated almost exactly to what I am doing here.
Teaching the teachers
I planned training for the principles in our cluster and their heads of department. I have talked about their staff’s right to have feedback, their right to have support to get better at teaching and their right if they are doing a good job to get praise. I have approached my training in the active, learner centred way that we are used to in the UK. But the first training session I did, I looked around the room and thought ‘oh no I’ve completely misjudged this’, because I am asking them to be participative in a culture where they are used to being told. There was an awful moment where they just looked at me, but they did then get up, get involved and started to talk to each other.
But when you’re in education we’re talking about growing people, whether that’s children or teachers, and people aren’t so very different whether you’re in Namibia or Oxford. All the sort of skills I use at home about trying to inspire, motivate, redirect, refocus are the same ones. It’s just the practical issues are different.
Sustainability
Sustainability is always the big question isn’t it? My instinct is yes, my work here has been. I think I chose the right thing to do, by questioning the teachers and training them and getting them to experience and think about things themselves. I haven’t done anything for anyone, I haven’t done anything to anyone - I have given them opportunities to explore and invited them to think about different things and I think that has enabled them to do the thinking for themselves. VSO is all about building a culture where people will continue to grow and thrive without you, so I am a catalyst for change.
Personal and professional development
I have learned such a lot about myself. I learned I can cope even when it feels really hard. You need to test yourself a bit and I have been up against the edge a bit here and it’s been fabulous – you feel more alive like that. Professionally, it’s not been easy. There’s been some really bad days and some hard things I have done, but that’s great – you learn that way. It’s pushed me to the edge of my skills and tested me quite often. But it’s exhilarating, when you’re doing things you’re not quite certain you can and then you find you can and it’s a wonderful feeling.
