VIEWS Volunteer Service Overseas (VSO)
Volunteering Overseas - Life After Headship
NICKY WILLIAMS, former Principal of Francis Combe Academy in Watford, said goodbye to her Headship role after 4.5 years. Since then, she’s been on a fascinating journey through Kenya, Thailand and Fiji. Nicky is currently volunteering with VSO in Ghana as a Teacher Training and Coaching Advisor, but she takes us back to where it all began.
I decided to fulfil a life-long ambition of mine – to volunteer in Africa. My year with ‘Global Vision International’ in Mombasa, Kenya was extraordinary. Teaching in one of the slums in Mombasa was life- changing for me. I was working in a ‘school’ where children were crammed into tiny rooms with few resources - no boards, chalk, paper, pencils or running water. Somehow, I got through. Over the following years, Nyota Ing’arayo Primary School was transformed into a properly registered school which now provides a full education to over 200 children every year, right through to standard 8. The school is reasonably independent now – it raises funds locally as well as from a tuk-tuk rental business set up by funding from the Global Vision International Trust.
It didn’t take me long to realise that I didn’t want to return to the UK, however, I needed to get a paid job. I was loving being back at the chalk face (literally!) and loved teaching the older children at primary level. An international school in Mombasa advertised a primary post which I secured - perfect timing! I loved every minute of re-learning my craft in a different sector of education.
Leaving Kenya was hard. Friendships ran very deep and frankly I could have stayed there forever, but, I really wanted to see more of the world. Where next?
My next chapter was Bangkok in Thailand as a Year 6 teacher and Key Stage 2 coordinator. Living in such a travel hub and earning a good salary with a low cost of living enabled me to explore many countries in South East Asia. Importantly, I have developed more as a primary school teacher and have enjoyed managing a small team. I worked across primary and secondary to complete the timetable for the whole school one year and was also the chairperson for the Council for International Schools.
I then spent a few weeks in the summer of 2015 with an ex- volunteer from the Mombasa project, who continued working for GVI and was running their project in Fiji. Whilst there, I was asked to use my teaching expertise to do some literacy assessments, which again showed good mechanical English, but little comprehension for most. Sadly, this whole village was hit by Cyclone Winston which caused widespread damage to buildings, schools, homes, infrastructure and agriculture in Fiji on February 20th 2016. There was complete devastation, with the whole project and village flattened. This included the school, with half the classrooms destroyed, and the library and teacher resource base, so lovingly set up, was wiped out. Not one resource or book remained.
My experience in Fiji confirmed I was destined to volunteer again. I’ve now been with VSO in Kumasi, Ghana since January for a 1-2 year post. I am a coach supporting tutors who are training new teachers at 11 Teacher Training Colleges. The focus is on girls, supporting Global Goals 4 and 5 on quality education and gender equality. The aim is to create ‘girl friendly’ classrooms so that more girls succeed in secondary education.
Volunteering has enabled me to live and work in another country, alongside local communities. I have taken more from those I have worked with, so much more than I’m perceived to give. Volunteering - giving your time, expertise and energy - really does shape future decisions about your life and in this crazy world of ‘must haves’, it reminds us of what is really important in life.
www.vso.org.uk/bethevolunteer/education March 2017 British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA) A truly digital classroom must
address e-safety concerns This month, regular Education Today contributor and BESA Director PATRICK HAYES looks at e-safety in schools.
According to a recent survey of 1,325 school ICT leaders by the National Education Research Panel (NERP), UK pupils at both primary and secondary school levels now spend more than 50% of their time engaging with ICT in the classroom.
Now, however, the average primary school
pupil spends 53.7% of their time engaging with ICT in the classroom, and secondary school pupils do 56% of the time. Increasingly ICT, or Ed Tech, permeates every aspect of a school in the UK from the school’s management information system to digital seating plans and parental engagement. Schools are even increasingly using virtual reality in the classroom and even holograms, as we saw with Microsoft’s HoloLens that was showcased at January’s Bett Show, the world’s largest Ed Tech exhibition, in London. But these massive levels of engagement with digital devices are bringing with them new challenges and concerns. Indeed the same research found that 51% of primary school teachers and 49% of secondary school teachers are seen to require training in e-Safety issues.
These concerns are present in a recent report from the Children’s Commissioner, Growing up Digital, which advises that children are not currently being ‘equipped with adequate skills to negotiate their lives online’. The report recommends that children must be taught ‘from an early age to engage safely and resiliently with the internet’. E-Safety is a very broad topic that spans all Key Stages and issues ranging from data security and online reputation management, to addressing concerns about online grooming and cyber-bullying. It’s a constantly changing field, with new jargon and issues emerging all the time.
It is fundamentally important, however, that anxieties around online safety don’t leave classrooms digital-free zones, with the transformative benefits of education technology left unrealised due to concerns around a lack of training. There are many powerful guides available to help give teachers the support they need, such as the Rising Stars Switched on Online Safety resource designed to help all schools to implement an effective, whole-school online safety policy, published in association with Havering Education Services. This perspective is echoed by Rising Stars who say that, “Rather than preventing children from using technology because it is deemed unsafe, it is far better to teach children to manage these risks safely.” They liken it to children around a swimming pool, “it is far better to teach children to swim so they are safe around water, rather than cordon off the swimming pool”.
Building independence is key – after all, pupils will be engaging in the online world in their careers and personal lives without a safety net once they leave school. And it would be a tragedy if pupils were unable to take advantage of the online world and the insights they can gain from it by an over-protective attitude. This would be a sure- fire recipe for “cotton-wool kids”.
As the NERP survey makes clear, however, the concerns around e- Safety in schools are very real. To ensure they don’t have a stifling effect, it is important that the right training, resources and support are provided to teachers to address their concerns about this emerging issue.
For information from BESA contact: Patrick Hayes 020 7537 4997
patrick@besa.org.uk
www.besa.org.uk
www.education-today.co.uk 7
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