Meet our 6th graders!

At the end of April, we started our OWN grade 6 classroom.

Until now, our method has been to partner with government schools. The government controls the teachers, curriculum, and all school decisions. We provide training, materials and support for teachers. While this has been a great way to change the quality of education, it has also caused many challenges because so much is outside our control. We’ve been thinking for a few years how to make a deeper and more lasting impact on the students.

So in addition to partnering with government schools, we’ve decided to open our own class this year. This government school only runs through 5th grade, so the 6th grade class is entirely ECC’s. Doing this 6th classroom autonomously allows us control and the ability to showcase a model of quality education for other schools to follow.

This is a massive undertaking for us

We had to interview and hire a lead teacher for 6th grade. But we did not want just any teacher. Our goal is to provide high-quality interactive education and fill in all the gaps that are missing in government schools. Our teacher is passionate about social work and children. He is learning all kinds of interactive methodology. He has had to unlearn everything he thought teaching was, and is doing an incredible job.

He also has an intern to support him, who helps with attendance, classroom management, and teaches some elective classes.

We even have a local community member who has volunteered to come in and teach English. He is the only person in the local community who can speak English so this is a huge asset for us.

Students were given an application and we assessed them based on performance, need, and their commitment to education. We’ve selected 19 incredible kids to be our first class. We’re so excited for them!

Learning by doing

Already, students have had some incredible interactive learning opportunities.

They have:

  • Visited the local government office and interviewed a politician
  • Observed a local animal and made a report about adaptive features
  • Built dioramas of different ecosystems
  • Been to a farm to observe and collect different flowering and non-flowering plants
  • Had a health worker visit their classroom to talk about healthy eating
  • Wrote their own “Festival books” to share about different festivals in Nepal

And this is after only 5 weeks of school. This is a drastic change from traditional learning, where students would spend all day sitting in the classroom, repeating after the teacher, and copying from the whiteboard.

If all continues to go well, you might see more classrooms from us soon :)