The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have been severely disastrous for most Ugandans, especially youth, businesspeople, and school-going children.
In Lango Sub-region, in the districts neighbouring Lake Kwania, and Lake Kyoga, namely Dokolo, Amolatar, Kwania, Apac, thousands of boys are now into catching fish, while most girls have been married off, or have babies, most of them below 16 years.
These young adolescent boys and girls have no hope of ever returning to school. Thousands of others are into business, with some now much richer than their parents.
But there’s good news. According to Ministry of Education and Sports, schools will reopen, for all classes on January 10. I know many parents are now looking forward to this date, after being stuck with children at home for almost two years. It is easy to understand their situation.
However, when schools reopen, the students will undoubtedly need special interventions to support them. Adolescence is a difficult transition period for many boys, and girls, and Covid-19 pandemic made it worse for them, at home.
In the two years of Covid-19, children have done many things, good and bad, and some of them seem unforgivable. They have grown big, physically and mentality, and a few others spiritually. When they return to school, they will be different from what their teachers knew about them.
As children return to school in 2022, teachers have to be prepared to handle them, this time using approaches that create win-win scenarios. One of these interventions is strengths-based approach education.
Edward Anderson, an American professor who popularized this concept in the US, defined strengths-based education as a process of assessing, teaching, and designing experiential learning activities to help students identify their greatest talents, and to then develop and apply strengths based on those talents in the process of learning, intellectual development, and academic achievement to levels of personal excellence.
Furthermore, in the paper titled “The Principles of Strengths-based Education”, Shane J. Lopez and Michelle C. Louis state that strengths-based education begins with educators discovering what they do best and developing and applying their strengths as they help students identify and apply their strengths in the learning process so that they can reach previously unattained levels of personal excellence.
This means that upholding strengths-based education and principles in schools is a sole responsibility of teachers. In fact, teachers who know their strengths, tend to focus on that, but most importantly, also recognise that students are never the same, that being different is not a strange at all.
As a matter of fact, doing what we do best leads to high levels of engagement and productivity, which is very good in a class setting or even at home. In a school, it means that teachers get to accomplish the intended learning activities, and thus achieve learning outcomes.
This strengths-based intervention will help as students return back to school early next year. Already, most of the top secondary schools in Lango Sub-region have admitted less than 20 per cent of their usual enrolment in Senior One, and Senior Five. I know more will be admitted, but many doubt whether we will have full classes in 2022.
Therefore, those who return to school, in which ever class, must be applauded, appreciated, and we shouldn’t victimize any student who had a baby or didn’t get to read any academic learning materials during period of school closure. Instead, we should consider that as a strength, because the students gained real world experience outside school, something they were shielded from in pre-Covid-19 times.
chool closures have not been a completely new thing in northern Uganda. Between 2002-2005, the region experienced small, unofficial, semi-lockdowns, and school closures, or shifting of schools, due to brutal activities of the LRA.
Many who were students during that turbulent time are now teachers, and they should use their resilience and experience to help students resume studies, and integrate them back to school.
Strengths-based education is an innovative, and inclusive approach that enhances the resilience of teachers and students, and will make child mothers and fathers, business children, and former child offenders feel that their Covid-19 experience is a strength, and does not in anyway limit their future potential.
This article was first published in the Daily Monitor.
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