Success Story: High School Teachers Volunteer to teach agriculture
Zoukougbeu, Côte d’Ivoire
ECHOES works with government teachers as volunteer “shadow teachers” who learn to teach agricultural education and engage in other community activities. These teachers shadow ECHOES field agents as they work in schools, with agricultural clubs, and on school gardens and cocoa plots.
At the Zoukougbeu Lycée in Côte d’Ivoire, school administrators offered two teachers, Mr. Tapé Jules Ségniblé and Mr. N’Guessan Germain Kassi, the chance to undergo year-long training to gain the skills to sustain the project and support their community.
Both shadow teachers have been teaching agriculture, along with their regular classes, since October 2008. Each teaches two classes reaching a total of 274 students. Mr. Kassi (pictured) is the school’s history
and geography teacher while Mr. Ségniblé is the mathematics teacher.
To support his work, Mr. Ségniblé utilizes the community resource center that ECHOES established at the school. With the resources available, he created a study book for his mathematics students. “For my colleagues, this center really serves as an information bank to inspire us to help our students achieve on tests and exams,” he says.
In addition to their teaching duties, Mr. Ségniblé and Mr. Kassi also provide support to the Family Support Scholarship recipients. They each serve as a mentor to ten students -- checking to see that they are attending school regularly, verifying their grades and report cards, and making sure they are performing well. They meet regularly with the mothers of the beneficiaries to discuss the state of their small businesses. Mr. Kassi is also the president of the community focus group that helps select students for the scholarship.
Outside of school, the shadow teachers help plan and organize community-wide awareness raising events, travel to satellite villages to encourage other teachers participating in ECHOES, and support the out-of-school youth training during busy times like seed planting and nursery monitoring.
WCF thanks Winrock International and the International Foundation for Education and Self-Help (IFESH) for contributing to this story.