The Global Teacher’s Staff Room

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

So yes, my name is Joanna. I’m a teacher first of all. Once a teacher, always a teacher. I’m from a family of teachers. Three of my four grandparents were teachers, both my parents were teachers, so it seems to run in the blood somehow. I was fortunate enough to have worked in Malawi for 11 years teaching and leading an early years department there. And that was like the most formative period of my professional life, I would say, just because of the things I learned and the most amazing community that I was part of. I try to be a leader, as is appropriate. I’m a mother and I’m also a traveler. Yes, I love going to new places, learning about people, trying to understand different ways of living. And basically, I’m happy when I work in a community with other people. So that’s what I like to do. That’s me.

What made you leave the teaching profession and how did Ubuntu Education start?

That’s a good question. Because I love teaching, so why leave the classroom? Over my teaching career, I took on some leadership roles and I really enjoyed the sort of coaching and mentoring aspect of that, the professional development. It’s another kind of teaching, but this time, teaching teachers alongside teaching the children. And I guess I could feel the impact of that, because ultimately, I was actually reaching more children, even if indirectly. As I was helping those around me to also grow. So yes, it was partly because of that. But then, I also relocated to the UK during the pandemic, to be near my family. When I got back to the UK, I did a few years back in the UK system but realised that I missed African education a lot. It was therefore an opportunity with Ubuntu Education, so I joined the team and haven’t looked back. It’s actually great to be amongst teachers all the time. But then, I do miss the classroom.

How does Ubuntu Education equip teachers and students with critical thinking, creativity, and communication skills to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow?

Thank you for asking this. What we wanted to create was a virtual staff room. That inclusive, friendly place where you’d be able to go and get some support, get some help, ask a question, share an answer or even start mentoring others as you become more experienced. So yes, the idea is for it to become the largest staff room in Africa. That’s what we’re trying to achieve and we now have over 60,000 teachers. We understand that teachers are each other’s greatest resource. Though we try to provide courses, events, webinars and so on, we still think that teachers are each other’s greatest resource. So essentially, it’s providing that space that’s inclusive, supportive, so that people can come with their diverse perspectives and really share. It’s about giving them that platform as teachers to kind of share those creative approaches that have worked for them in their classroom.

Last week we hosted a Q &A session with one of our EduInnovators. So, there was a presentation, but it was actually more about her taking questions from the floor. Teachers wanting to learn about and from her teaching practice. She was really generous with her advice and her time and of course, it was very inspiring for other teachers to hear from someone who is leading on the ground and who is giving them that time.

So yes, creativity kind of naturally emerges from the opportunities that we provide. And then it’s kind of growing because teachers are asking for more. They’re saying, well, now can we have a Q &A session with someone who can tell us about XYZ, or, I would like to host a webinar on curriculum design. So we’re now starting to get approached by teachers with confidence and who know what they want to do. For us, it’s just about making that possible as far as we can.

In an increasingly digital world, what specific training and guidance does Ubuntu Education offer to schools and teachers to enhance learning outcomes through technology?

It’s a real challenge for all teachers globally and even more so if you’re in a setting with limited resources to keep abreast of technological advancement and keep up with the students who seem to accelerate 10 times the rate any of us adults can. So we do understand that it’s a real challenge and because of the breadth of our community, coming from different resource settings, it’s quite difficult for us in particular. Because of how diverse our community is, we don’t want to be saying this is one way to do it and you must do this and you must do that. A lot of what we focus on is around the digital mindset and the digital skills to make the most of the technology you have access to, so that you can start to build on whatever you’ve got. Like the way teachers support their students by building on the skills they already have and then taking it to the next level. But I think we teachers sometimes feel like we have to get there straight away but actually, no, no, no, we can just start small. So if you have access to YouTube, what can you search up? Are you good at using search engines? Like start there, find what you need. Someone else will be doing it too. You just need to have a look and then borrow some of those ideas and modify them for your own class or your own cohort of students and so on.

So we try to start simple, make it attainable. We have some courses on our platform that teachers can take around these issues. But we also received funding recently from MasterCard Foundation to build a series of training around digital transformation. And we actually haven’t hosted this on our hub yet. We built the delivery. The mode of delivery was a WhatsApp chat bot. So teachers were accessing it this way in low resource settings. And it was fantastic because they could just be on a smartphone when they had access to the internet. They could be taking themselves through a few modules, getting a task to do, carrying it out in class, responding to the WhatsApp chat bot. And already, just through doing the course, they’re developing their digital skill set and their confidence. And so much of it is around confidence. As far as we understand, this is what the community tells us. Then they start to do things. I realize, oh, I can do that. I can do more and I can collaborate with someone. Sometimes it’s the older teachers who have that gravitas, that leadership, and they have a lot of confidence in their teaching delivery. But the digital skills are the things that they are quite nervous about quite quietly. So, then trying to encourage pairing of older, more experienced and really kind of solid teachers with the younger generation who need that expertise in their own teaching. But they’ve got the digital skills. It’s very much like cross pollinating. We try to run projects, programmes that encourage teachers to make the most of everybody’s skills in a school setting. As for the pilot programme, we’re hoping that we’ll get further funding to be able to scale it because it was really successful. The feedback was great from the school communities there in Zambia, Rwanda and Malawi. But basically, one of the main resources is actually the edgy innovators and the teacher -to -teacher on the platform, saying try this resource. Oh, here’s how you use AI. Use it a little bit. Don’t depend on it. You know, that kind of thing. It’s the conversation that’s actually leading the digital transformation within the community. So yes, it’s a long old road for all of us. Hey, everything keeps changing very quickly. But still, we’re lucky to have a community that’s really proactive and really willing to share.

How does Ubuntu Education tailor its approach to consider the diverse lived experiences and cultural contexts of African teachers, and how does this empowerment translate into improved educational outcomes?

Yes, so of course it’s a challenge to remain relevant and to make sure we answer the needs of the community. And of course, we acknowledge that in our efforts to be allies to this cause of development of education and digital inclusion, and the platform which we make as accessible as possible by being free to join, people do need an email address and do need access to the internet. But once they’ve got that, there’s an awful lot that they can access just at the base level of the platform and accessing the community which is kind of the biggest step I think teachers can take in finding their own professional voice. So, one of the things that we really try to do is highlight this idea of the teacher’s voice. Of course, all the teachers are coming from different settings, different resource levels, different cultural communities but one thing they’ve got in common is the fact they have to stand in front of children, they have a learning objective, they’ve got to deliver and there’s a pressure to that. So that’s one thing that is very unifying amongst the community. We start from those points of common lived experiences and we really encourage teachers to share those experiences on the platform. And then we also have some nonprofit programmes.

We sponsor different programmes on a smaller level and from those, we learn an awful lot about what communities need. And of course, every community is very different. But it keeps us in check to make sure we do what people actually need. There’s a technology fair in the UK that’s one of the world’s biggest. I visited it last year and I was just blown away. Technology is fantastic but all along, I kept thinking, how is this going to impact at scale? It’s wonderful but it’s almost like a technological vanity project.

We’re all looking at how clever it is, but really, how is it going to impact children every day? How is it going to support those teachers who really just want to improve their practice with one step every day?

So yes, we try to take it back and these programmes that we run in schools, the teachers are very open with us. They tell us exactly what they want, what they need.

And community members are also involved in that consultation. And parents too. And very often, what comes out is that safety is a primary concern for everybody. And so, of course, that safeguarding element is something that’s really important to promote. But yes, it’s a challenge to remain relevant to everybody. But we’re trying to be as welcoming as possible and to make sure that we can connect people who have things in common and situations in common so that they can support each other.
Read the concluding part of this interview in EduTimes Africa November issue.

joanna marriot

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Joanna Marriott
Chief Engagement Strategist (CES) at Ubuntu Education, focused on growing engagement on the Ubuntu HUB to amplify teacher innovation across Africa. I am a former teacher and leader in schools both in Malawi and the UK with extensive experience in leading Early Years departments.

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By Joanna Marriott
Ubuntu Education