A vibrant mosaic of individual and collective creativity
I arrived at Kabiria Academy and was immediately blown away by its natural beauty and pristine campus. The school is set upon the side of a hill. The hill opens up onto a sprawling plain where children play animatedly on the school’s football field. Kabiria borders the Kangemi and Kawangware slums, outside Nairobi. As the academy manager ushered me to his office to speak about the school, I walked by an organised procession of children in an Early Childhood Development class walking to the latrines hand in hand. In each classroom that I passed, I saw pupils diligently working on individual or group assignments. Some teachers demonstrated concepts on the chalkboard, but the majority of teachers were actively moving through the classroom, working with individual pupils. Everywhere, I was greeted by the rich sounds of learning.
As I spoke with the academy manager about ongoing activity at the academy, I noticed a chart of names and roles on the blackboard in his office. He explained to me that the chart outlined the parental and pupil governance systems at the academy. As I hadn’t seen this outlined before at a Bridge academy, I inquired how these particular governance systems were established. He explained that as a school leader, he developed and implemented these systems himself, organising school elections for the student government and inviting community leaders to participate in the parental governance system. There is a whole system of academy manager training, development and support that underpins the work of each academy manger but within that, as within the classroom, there are individual strategies and approaches used.
After leaving his office, I visited several different classrooms in the school. In many ways, these classrooms looked remarkably similar to other Bridge classrooms that I have visited in Liberia, Nigeria, and Kenya. Teachers were in classrooms, using technology to facilitate pupil-centred learning activities. Pupils were energetically engaging with these learning activities by taking notes on teacher demonstrations, answering problem sets, independently reading texts, answering comprehension questions, or completing conceptual practice activities. In short, every minute of the lesson was being used productively to achieve the objectives of the lesson. Yet, every lesson was different, every teacher had a different style and the responses of students varied depending upon both those factors.
Kabiria Academy is representative of other Bridge academies in two senses. First, the instructional approaches being utilised at Kabiria reflect the best practices that guide instructional design at all Bridge academies. But second, and perhaps more interestingly, the school landscape, leadership, teaching staff, and student body are incredibly unique. The academy and its operations reflect the individual training, background, and expertise of each group.
In all of my work at Bridge academies, I am constantly struck by this paradoxical scenario in which schools are at once similar and also unique. Those elements that are similar across schools within the network reflect deliberate decisions to encourage best-practices in school administration, community engagement, and instructional design. For instance, it is extraordinary to see that teachers across thousands of schools are teaching mathematics using a gradual release model that prioritises independent practice and provides scaffolded support for such practice. Compared with teacher-centred, lecture-based approaches to mathematics instruction, such an approach is undeniably beneficial for pupil learning.
But at each academy and in every classroom, individuality is visible at every step of the educational process. At the academy level, initiatives like the community and pupil governance system illustrate the ways in which individual and collective efforts define how an academy operates and best serves its’ pupils and parents. Every pupil, parent, and community is unique. And every Bridge academy manager and teacher is trained to respond to those unique and diverse needs through bespoke and innovative initiatives.
In my experience, however, the area of greatest creativity and individual initiative is in the classroom itself. Teachers in all Bridge classrooms are equipped with state-of-the-art lesson guides that are synchronised daily to their teacher computer. These lesson guides ensure that teachers are equipped with pedagogical approaches and learning materials that reflect best-practices. But, far from stifling individual creativity, these lesson guides encourage individual creativity! Because Bridge lesson guides minimise lecture and teacher talk, teachers are given more time (at least 50% per class) to do what works best in classrooms: provide individualised feedback to each and every pupil. This could manifest itself in a number of different ways. The teacher has an opportunity to provide straightforward feedback on whether individual responses are correct or incorrect. When a teacher identifies an incorrect response, they can work individually with that pupil to better understand the confusion and provide targeted feedback on how to improve. Finally, the teacher can use this formative evaluation to adjust their instructional approach in the future and provide more effective whole-class instruction.
Let’s imagine how this might look in practice. In a non-Bridge classroom, a teacher could spend 90–100% of time lecturing on and modelling long division. Pupils are likely confused, but the teacher has no way of knowing, or responding to, this confusion. In a Bridge classroom, the teacher models a problem and immediately assigns independent practice. During this independent practice time, pupils are getting formative feedback on whether they are correctly using the strategy for long division. If a pupil is struggling, the teacher is able to identify the root of the difficulty. Maybe the pupil is mixing up the dividend and divisor when setting up the problem. Maybe the pupil is forgetting to bring down the next number from the dividend. No matter the issue, the teacher is uniquely positioned to identify and respond to the issue in a individualised manner. And in subsequent demonstrations of long division, the teacher is able to respond to any patterns that she picked up on during the feedback session.
As a result, a Bridge classroom is not defined by a teacher exercising their creative capacities by lecturing for 45 minutes on a particular topic. This is not because Bridge teachers are incapable of lecturing for 45 minutes. Rather, it is because we know that the most effective approach to education involves pupil work and teacher feedback, not teacher talk and lecture. A Bridge classroom, then, is defined by a teacher exercising their creative capacities through the facilitation of learning opportunities that are proven to drive learning gains. And we see this creativity manifest in the ways that a teacher visits each and every pupil, observes their work, identifies the root of any challenges, and provides targeted feedback to improve performance.
As I watched lessons at Kabiria that day, what I saw was 9 different teachers employing learner-centred pedagogy, facilitating active learning, and providing specific and actionable feedback differently. I did not see teachers with their back to the walls lecturing on a subject, or classrooms where vocabulary notes written on the blackboard comprised the activity for the day. In short, what I saw was a vibrant mosaic of individual and collective creativity, where teachers equipped with training and resources creatively responded to the individual needs of each and every pupil.
As with every Bridge school, the uniqueness can flourish, precisely because of the similarities that underpin them.
Authored by Tim Sullivan, Instructional Design Director at Bridge International Academies.
