By Merritt Frey, Executive Director

Here in the U.S., parents and teachers often worry about the “summer slide” — a dip in students’ academic skills caused by summertime disengagement from learning. In Mali this year, we are triple-y concerned about a slide — students missed months of school from a teacher strike followed by a several month closure for COVID-19, followed by summer break. What to do to help kids stay connected to learning while school is closed!?

Given the reality that our students have no books in their homes and absolutely no access to online learning, we are going old school!

Last month, we piloted a new take-home workbook for our 7th and 8th graders in one of our partner villages, Sebela. Kids there at Tim Gibson Middle School had the option to take home a workbook with 14 lessons in French and English. Of the 66 7th and 8th graders, 41 returned their completed workbooks!

Each student who did their workbook will receive soap for their family, to help keep everyone safe during the pandemic. The top 3 scorers on the workbook will receive big bags of rice for their family. Our Teacher Project Coordinator, Adama, is correcting the workbooks so the students can learn from their mistakes by reviewing his feedback..

We are excited with the level of engagement with this new tool. We will again test the workbooks this month at The Mindful Bunch School in Kafara. If all goes well, we hope to develop several workbooks and have them ready to keep students engaged during future closures from the pandemic or other issues like strikes or unrest in the country.

This is another example of how our staff are finding creative ways to be helpful and relevant during these stressful pandemic times. Whether it is using the radio to educate parents about the need to avoid early marriage, delivering hand-washing tools to our schools, or ideas like this — we are dedicated to keeping our kids safe and helping them stay on track with school!