LEAPS ACADEMY: Training teachers is faster than changing curricula
LEAPS Academy is a training and tutoring center. Co-founded by Mariem Bchir and Walid Hedidar, two young Tunisian scholars passionate about education. They are revolutionizing education in Africa by providing high-quality and innovative: teacher training, teacher mentorship, and student tutoring.
Co-Founders finding one another
Mariem began thinking about her journey for social change at the African Leadership Academy, dissecting issues in education, and prototyping on educational projects in Rwanda and Tunisia with a couple of her classmates. They decided to work with teachers because they are less politicised, easier to access, and provide direct access to larger human-capital: students. Teachers were often ready to help and willing to support students. They believed that teachers have the ability to change the curriculum by transforming the way it is executed. Mariem began organising training throughout Tunisia, bringing together both educators and teachers.
Similarly, Walid’s interest in education found roots after taking part in a teaching workshop in Washington DC when he was just 17 years old. It allowed him to experience teaching differently and transformed his view on education: that teaching can be done differently, and that learning can be fun. Taking part in a workshop organised by Mariem also provided him with a critical space for thinking and reflecting upon teaching methodologies, all while engaging with exciting activities.
At that time there was no formal teacher training in Tunisia, which motivated Walid to work on filling that gap. Joining efforts with another friend, he built a curriculum that solidified their previous learnings, while sustaining the conversation with teachers who were innovative. These were mostly English teachers who seemed the most open to change ‘how things are done’ in the Tunisian context. They had more control over their curricula and were innovative in its dissemination. At the time, Walid and his friend were young high schoolers who started leading training sessions beyond the capital city, Tunis. He tells us that it was a challenging endeavor for high schoolers to train teachers on new and innovative teaching methodologies, that there isn’t one way of how teaching “must be done”. In the beginning, there was a back-clash that pushed them to rethink how they could market themselves.
“We wanted it to be a conversation, not a top-down sort of training, but to create a collaborative space in which we could grow collectively.”
Working with teachers in training workshops became an emotional experience. Teachers needed support. They were excited, especially after feeling that they had been neglected by various governmental bodies. They longed for being in spaces in which they can share ideas with other teachers, learn about one another’s struggles and methodologies.
Shortly after their individual experiences piloting and organizing teacher training, both Mariem and Walid had to leave for their undergraduate studies in the United States. However, during the summer they would each come back to do more training tours, individually. Since their first encounter at “Show Me How You Teach” a training workshop piloted by Mariem, they began liaising on ways to work together and merge their efforts. Today, they continue to share a passion for teachers and believe for it to be a short-term and long-term solution to improve the education sector.
“Working together meant that we are building a business model, testing and prototyping, speaking to more teachers. We are not only co-founders, but we are also great friends, and we do take pleasure in working together! Partners in crime!” — Walid Hedidar & Mariem Bchir
We conversed with them further and dived deeper into how they are leading their mission.
As an African, I do understand that there are struggles in many of our respective educational systems, yet it is contextual. Can you please speak more about who and what are you solving for?
Mariem: There are several problems we are trying to tackle. The biggest issue is that every aspect of the educational system is not holding, it has been designed for the needs of 50 years ago. If we look at the curricula, they are politicised. They do not serve the market needs nor do they help students build the skills that are needed for this century: critical thinking, analytical thinking, among others. Curricula are boring and dis-engaging, in addition to the fact that the execution is poorly done. We experience a very industrial way of executing a curriculum. Students are also seeing that they are going to school to receive an education to access the marketplace, and yet they are getting no jobs. This is the general problematic theme.
Now, if we dive deeper and if we want to change the educational system that becomes a complex issue because there are components that one can tackle and other ones which one can’t. In our context, a curriculum for instance takes 10 years or more to change. And even the way it changes remains one that is politicised, influenced by national and foreign forces. There is also a huge influence from the older regime, prior to the Tunisian revolution, and other cultural aspects that must shift when it comes to bureaucratic processes, corruption, etc. For instance, those are much bigger elements that must change. And so, in our search to solve this educational crisis, we have been looking for a component that is malleable, dynamic and that is human capital-based. It is much easier to work with communities rather than the system. It was also about finding a component that we can directly contact. Teachers, in fact, teach the curriculum and they are also the ones who are connected to the students. It was a golden bridge between the other various components that make the educational system as a whole.
However, we are not dismissive of the other aspects of the education sector. In fact, we departed from reflections about our own experiences as students in government schools, and how teachers either made or broke our relationships with certain subjects. I personally disliked certain subjects, and it was because of the teachers I have had. They were not equipped with the knowledge, the psychology of child development, or any basic learning from research on development that is already out there that would have helped them in their diverse classrooms. Mind you that this is a teacher who comes with no training to the classroom, and who for the first couple of years s/he is subject to mockery from students. They actually end up learning by practice with very little guidance. And even if they are guided, it feels more of scarry guidance in which teachers are meant to look well while supervisors are watching them.
Both Walid and I have had the chance to be part of other educational systems. We experienced what it was like to have an engaged teacher, who is more empathetic, and more understanding of the students’ needs. We realised that learning can be fun!
Walid: I agree with Mariem. In addition to that, the quality of education is decreasing. Tackling education through policy or curriculum-design is likely to take us 10 to 25 years. It was not an efficient route for us. Working with those who carried education on their shoulders and who are able to adapt to students’ needs was and is our golden gate. For instance, we encountered teachers who tried to be more innovative about their teachings: they took condensed and poorly structured curricula, framed and delivered them in ways that made a difference. While these teachers are still constrained in other aspects of their profession, the classroom is their own space which they have control over, and in which they can deliver an education that is different from what the ministry presents.
Looking at that gap of teacher training allows us not to wait in vain for access to policy amendments, or for either one of us to get into that position of power for us to see the change happening.
However, we are in interaction with the much bigger system. We are trying to focus on more research, data, and consulting. We are also trying to mobilise more teachers by improving teacher communication across the country. We believe that we are planting seeds that shall bring about a cultural shift in the ways in which education is seen and executed.
Our vision is to provide quality education for young individuals in the world, but more precisely in Africa and the Middle East. That’s through:
- Teacher training: re-design it to the needs of the communities that we want to access.
- Research: We hope to design our training based on research that is not borrowed from the West. We want locally informed research that would help us in training but also shift the educational system.
That sounds fantastic and exciting. I am also intrigued about the learning model which you have developed specifically for teachers, the 4-step learning cycle based on theory, practice, feedback, reflection. Can you tell us a bit more?
Mariem: From my side, I realised that there is no learning by reading. You learn by doing. Along with my friends in Rwanda and South Africa, we realised that we had learned a lot about ourselves by receiving feedback from various individuals who had impacted our learning at the African Leadership Academy. The thinking started when I was 19 years old. However, today we are thinking about it in the following way: If there is a theory that you have learnt, you must apply it and evaluate whether it works for you. If it doesn’t work, you must move on and try out the next thing. Teaching is about trying, but within education only one model has been put in place for teachers to execute and it has not changed. In fact, teachers cannot be prepared only by being equipped with knowledge. It is not enough. A lot of theories coming from western research are not applicable to Tunisian classrooms.
During our training, we attempt to combine both: theory and practice. In the morning, we lead with theory sessions informed by various research from all around the world and give teachers the chance to try it out in the afternoon and create their own teaching recipes from it depending on their own experiences with students. We emphasise that these recipes are dynamic and adjustable based on changing contexts and generations. We tried to go beyond manuals, by combining theory, practice, and feedback. Frequent feedback from students was helpful. We also encouraged teachers to give feedback to one another.
Such a model requires more resources and time. However, if teachers begin their careers with such training, they become in a better position with a strong base to tackle student growth and improve on their teaching methodologies.
Walid: I think that the uniqueness of our model lies in the dynamic nature of the practice component: there is no time-space between theory and application. It is iterative throughout the program, and so teachers have the ability to evaluate themselves before even returning to their classrooms. Giving feedback to teachers also invokes a cultural shift in how teaching is done since often teachers are not used to receiving feedback from their students on their teaching methods.
I read that you are officially launching a new teacher training in the summer of 2021. How are the preparations going?
Mariem: Given the pandemic, many things have changed. We were trying to have a physical session — an opportunity to also finally put our business model at work. However, we are now asking ourselves many questions: Should we move online? How do we move online? Who should we involve? And it does appear that online outreach with distance learning has proven to us that we can reach far more people than we ever thought possible.
Our vision for how we will launch as a training center in Tunisia in 2021 is currently changing. There is a lot of work to do in that aspect. However we are launching ourselves as a consulting and research center, and we are building the building blocks of a strong educational consultancy that can serve a global audience.
Our commitment to education is very meaningful to the both of us, and those who have been involved in our training sessions. We believe that a launch that could bring various stakeholders of education together is important, especially bodies that have an impact on teachers’ work, in addition to local and international researchers.
Walid: As Meriam said, the nature of our work is very adaptable to the situations in which we are. While we have that bigger vision, we also recognise that the system we are working with changes very quickly and dramatically, considering what is happening with COVID-19. For the academy, the online component is important, especially for education. To scale up in Africa requires an online presence and it is a project we are pursuing.
We are also still looking for people to work with, and thinking about which stakeholders to bring together. Such a move requires a lot of thinking because many of these stakeholders do not usually converse with one another. We need to make sure that when they are sitting on the same table, but are rather able to have a dialogue with outcomes.
I do remember an instance in which we brought together teachers and students. This, believe me, can go in every possible wrong way. When not equipped with the right tools, teachers may think that students are not motivated to learn. From the students’ perspectives, they might think superficially that it is the teachers who are not good at teaching. Every party, in fact, will think that it is the other party’s fault. This is also true for the government, teacher unions, and students. Bringing these folks to sit on the same table will allow them to be closer, and engage in education development. But again, it’s not about performativity and celebration of their co-existence, rather it is about how these stakeholders are engaging with one another, which hopefully won’t be in a contentious way, especially, in the Tunisian context.
Moving forward, we want to pilot in microformat how these interventions can happen while focusing on research and consulting. We hope for our launch to be holistic, incorporating these components all together.
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