Impact Stories
Keith’s progress has been exciting to witness. A few years ago, he couldn’t read a single word. Now, at nine years old, he can pick up just about any book and read it with ease. This change has come through the literacy program at Blue Star Community School, where Impact One has been training and mentoring teachers for the past four years. With the right skills, they’re now able to teach reading more effectively, and children like Keith are benefiting from it.
Teaching a class is tough, but imagine one with 88 preschoolers. That’s a lot of energetic little ones running around, jumping, and crying - chaos, right? Honestly, just thinking about it can be overwhelming. But at Good Shepherd Community School, two teachers are doing extraordinary work to transform their classroom.
When you walk into Martha and Sarah’s classroom, the first thing you’ll notice is order.
This week, I stood in the back of a 2nd grade classroom and observed the Literacy lesson. Using handmade flashcards, the students reviewed all of the letter sounds they've learned complete with fun actions. Then one by one, the students came up to a handmade letter board and created their own 3 letter words with the sounds. Together, the class sounded out each 3 letter word. Tears filled my eyes as I watched these children reading! Just last year, if I had stood in the back of this same classroom, not a single child would have been able to identify letters or their sounds, much less make any words from them. Our Teacher Training and Mentoring is making an incredible impact in the classrooms.
As 2016 comes to an end, there is a sense of excitement within our schools that I've never witnessed before. They are pumped... they are confident... and they are ready for the new year!
At our last management training of the year, our schools gathered together for three intense days of planning. It was the first time our schools have ever put an entire year's plan on paper.
One of our core goals at Impact One is to equip our schools. Through every training, meeting, and school visit, we seek to impart both skills and confidence in to our school leaders and teachers, because we believe they can! We believe they can do so many things, and we want them to believe that too. We also know that empowered teachers will raise up empowered students.
At last week's Network Meeting, I saw the beautiful results of equipping our school leaders with such confidence.
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