Social and emotional learning is one of the key interventions that Link Education Ethiopia delivers in target schools of our girls’ education project seeking to support marginalized girls to complete their education.
The Social Emotional Learning training intervention has eight sessions to build marginalized girls’ self-awareness, understanding, and managing feelings, coping with disappointment, friends, and relationships, empathy and respecting differences, motivation and goals. We provide training of trainer workshops to school Gender Education Advisory Committees and headteachers which the trainers cascade down to teachers in schools for improving learning and these other skills. These pupils have been flagged as at risk due to being withdrawn, and lacking self-confidence; for example, not speaking up in class, may have challenges building friendships and relating to others, and are usually quiet but may sometimes experience periods of extreme emotional duress.
Mrs. Aberash Alambo, English teacher and Girls’ Education Advisory Committee Coordinator at Shanto Secondary school, started to better understand the needs of her pupils after taking the training. In particular, she noticed how one of her 9th grade students, Almaze, was struggling.
Almaze said that, ‘’before I received the social emotional and learning training, I was very shy to speak in front of others not only in the school but also, I was afraid to respond to families. But the training created an exposure to talk and discuss with the team who attended the training through a means of game activities. The training improved my confidence and now I can read stories in front ofall of my classmates.’’
The school headteacher, Mr. Zekiwos, has followed and supported the social and emotional learning training in his school. He is now urging the woreda (local administrative region) education office to expand the practice to non-project areas and schools.
You can learn more about how Link supports Social and Emotional Learning across all of our programmes by downloading our approach paper.
