When newspapers become the best learning tool

The best way to get students learn faster is have them involved in classroom activities. That is why teachers in Pader District have resorted to using Daily Monitor newspapers as one of their teaching tools. As STEVEN TENDO writes, the project has borne fruits:-

Oscar Okello of Lanyotono in Pader District is clear about what he wants; after school, he wants to be a doctor. He wants to study and get out of the situation he is now; poverty in order to help his family and community. At least what he believes is possible, given what he has been reading in the newspapers he receives every Monday of the school term.

Looking a little uneasy, probably because it is threatening to rain and he has to trek four kilometres home, he explains his ambitions in relation to the news. “I see many professionals in the newspapers and I know they got there because they read,” he tells Sunday Monitor. He marvels at the many clever things these people in the news say.

Best experience
Like many of his counterparts in rural Pader District, reading newspapers, even when they receive them once a week is probably their best educational experience. Beyond being just another classroom tool that could help pupils to brush up their reading and writing skills, newspapers have been identified to be an agent for enhanced understanding.

The more the children read the papers, the more they get to appreciate their situation and the more they think about making it better. Teachers in Pader have long realised the gem that newspapers are in their classes; they follow the activities in the activity sections for children and they long for more academic material. Not that they do not have other materials. Pader Town hits the newcomer as a dour frontier town, and it is. According to the few inhabitants who have decided not to go the rural areas many kilometres away, even the food comes in from Lira District.

Ghost town?
There is a fierce determination to keep the town alive even if it is by opening the forlorn shops to the countable customers. In the outskirts, teachers have to find ways of upping education levels. During market days; on Tuesday and Thursday, children relegate school to a position lower on their priority list and other problems. This is, however, just another headache when coupled with any other issues, from scarce female teachers to reluctance of women to teach in rural areas, experts think, because they will not attract suitors.

Being a region inundated by non-governmental organisation programmes, especially to do with war emergence education, chances are that there are text books in some of the schools. The teachers, though, confess that newspapers are more current and using them gives pupils a sense of unity with the rest of the children in other parts of the country.

Teachers speak
“As teachers, we are always trying to learn new ways of applying the newspaper in class. We appreciate there are many ways and it depends on the creativity of the teacher,” Mr Simon Peter Akena, the headmaster at Anga Katoke Primary School, says as he picks newspaper copies for his school. “We have noted that when the papers arrive, there is less talk and the level of concentration has increased.”

And the excitement among the pupils in the schools is real. When the drop-off vehicle arrives at Ogago Primary School, it is immediately surrounded by children, eagerly looking inside to see the prized possessions they will be holding onto for the next week until a new paper comes.

“The newspaper gives them a lot to think about. On Friday, they debate and what they have been reading in the papers is top on their agenda,” Mr James Okoyo Bobo, Ogago’s head teacher, says. He reveals that generally, he has noted children are forming better sentences since last term.

The efforts of various groups, the teachers, the parents and community leaders, are continuous. Nongovernment organisations are key in taking the newspapers to the different schools in Pader. Sometimes, a snag is hit where teachers might say they do not know how best to use the tool but there is always a solution.

Mr Denish Walter Ocen who teaches Mathematics, admits he is stumped on how to use newspapers in a Maths lesson. “I usually find only things like the page numbers or maybe to just tell them to count pages. Other than that, it is difficult to use them,” he says. His colleagues offer advice that he could find whatever topic he is teaching in the newspaper always. Mr Ocen and other teachers who find such problems is the reason the organisations like ZOA Refugee Care spend time training and retraining teachers.

In many of the ZOA-sponsored schools in Pader, English is still a problem with teachers resorting to the local language. That is the only way the children will understand the topics. When they started receiving newspapers last term, the teachers found it very difficult to relay the information in the papers.

Two terms into the programme, the children seem to have caught on. Appeals for big pictures and less text are not as many as they were at the beginning of the first school term. Teachers have started seeing an increase in interest in what is written other than what is depicted in pictures.

With the advantage of living his life in two worlds, Pader and Kampala, Mr Robert Otim, who drives to different schools every Monday to deliver newspapers thinks the programme is a lot more important than can be seen on the surface.

“These children have nothing else. They do not have access to what my children in Kampala do. Here, small mercies are very big indeed,” he philosophises as he drops off some children he met on a muddy road to Ogago. Mr Otim observes giving newspapers to the children is probably the highlight of their lives in the week.

Mr Benjamin Stephenson Okole, the headmaster of Olung Primary School in Lokole Sub-county, believes his teachers are benefitting from the programme because they have access to current affairs, something they did not have before. “The children can be slow but when their teachers are well versed, they will get better in a shorter time,” he says.

It’s raining heavily but Dan Owana Tokana of P7 and Christine Acen have to wait a little longer to get their copies of Daily Monitor. He has a long distance to go home, about 3km but he, like many others in his school, are used to that.

“No one else at home can afford newspapers,” he tells us. “We read them at school and get as much information as we can. We tell those in the community what is happening.” For instance, he brought them the news of the Bududa landslides. He also told them what a landslide is all because of what he had read in the newspapers. Mr Lauben Mwetware, the education manager for ZOA Refugee Care, points at more problems hindering education development in Pader District.

No female motivation
“Female teachers are scarce in this region,” he says. “One would find them concentrated in the towns.” According to the manager, this renders the education experience of many girls doomed because they have no one to relate to, with only male teachers.

Dropping out by females is common. Lower primary classes have parity of the sexes but about Primary five, the girls start leaving school. “By P7, we have as few as 15 per cent girls of the classes. For instance, there’s a school in Okoro where I found 22 boys and three girls,” Mr Mwetware says.

Newspapers in Education programmes can help bridge this gap, Mr Mwetware believes. “If the girls can go home with the papers and share with their parents, especially if the newspaper contains information related to their situation as girls, we would achieve some level of stability where their education is concerned.”