Muppets Take Accra

IDP Foundation, Inc. (IDPF) and our partners at Sesame Workshop, with the help of researchers from NORC at the University of Chicago, had the opportunity to present the Techniques for Effective Teaching (TFET) program at the 2018 mEducation Alliance Symposium on November 6 in Washington DC.

The focus of this year’s symposium was the central role of the teacher, and how technology can provide support for a teacher’s professional development, especially in low-resource environments. Our TFET program offers teachers 14 video-training modules showing valuable child-centered learning techniques, with accompanying teacher workbooks, training manuals, and in-person trainings. We were very excited to share how our project utilizes technology to support teachers in Ghana and even had a little help from our Sesame Street Muppet friends Kami and Zobi!

The special session, entitled Muppets Take Accra, began in a typical Sesame Workshop manner, with a fun game to get the audience up and moving. After that, Allison Lawshe, Chief Program Officer of IDPF, gave an overview of the Rising Schools Program, IDPF’s keystone program that provides low-fee private school proprietors with financial literacy and school management training and access to capital. She explained how the program led us to seek out Sesame Workshop’s expertise in creating a teacher training program that could provide helpful techniques to promote children’s social and emotional learning.

After hearing more details about TFET from Bosun Jang, Senior Manager for International Social Impact at Sesame Workshop, the presenters shared a short video clip of the Girls’ Education and Inclusion in the Classroom Module with the audience. Our session finished with Varuni Dayaratna, Vice President of International Projects at NORC, presenting key baseline findings from the impact evaluation report NORC is currently conducting on the effectiveness of the program.

We loved being a part of this exciting symposium that gathered so many people from around the world to discuss the power of technology in the classroom. To learn more about the TFET program, see here.