Author: Vassilia Orfanou, PhD, Post Doc
Headline Diplomat eMagazine
Education is a fundamental human right, as emphasized in the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child and the 1951 Refugee Convention. Especially in early years, education strengthens the individual and better helps them navigate the world. It can equip the youth to escape poverty, live a more fulfilled life and eventually uplift families, communities, and nations.
Now considering the fact that 41% of refugees are children below 18, ensuring and providing education in their early years protects them from being vulnerable to sexual exploitation, child labor, child marriage, and forceful recruitment into armed groups. In fact, education in their early years will empower them with the necessary strength, support and hope and instill the skills and knowledge to become independent and productive; understand their potential and be given a chance to build or rebuild their lives.
Teachers Face Problems when Teaching Refugees
Teaching refugees does not come without hurdles, which are enumerated below.
1. Electricity
Electricity plays an essential must-have in education. As in every school setting, teachers need electrical power to keep light bulbs on during dark days and at night. Unfortunately, power cuts are commonplace. Without artificial lights, learning often happens in the dark in a poorly lit environment.
Furthermore, children need light to do homework, read books, and revise previous topics for better assimilation. The absence of electricity hinders education as children cannot possibly adopt to learn at night, resulting in many failing to complete their education.
Another critical factor is that phones, laptops, and tablets are only active with electricity, thereby preventing children from accessing alternative learning resources online or pre-downloaded.
2. Language Barrier
Some students need to be more conversant when their primary language teachers speak, and some teachers need to improve their translation instructions in ways students will actually understand. These issues can make the learning slow and complex and take days to convey concepts to refugee students.
Some English-speaking countries prefer to teach refugees English first to weaken the language barrier before beginning their education and also to make them better adapt to their host country. Nevertheless, other subjects like mathematics can be challenging to convey since students will encounter unfamiliar symbols to assimilate with.
3. Digital Device Availability
As previously mentioned, digital devices provide young refugees access to additional resources on the internet or pre-downloaded. Furthermore, teachers use these devices on social media platforms to receive homework feedback and discuss the school curriculum.
Teachers also use their phones, laptops, and tablets to give presentations or find answers to questions children present, making them necessary for effective learning. However, getting access to these devices is tricky as they’re expensive and bulky.
While many refugees have devices today, a study shows that around 29% of refugee households have phones, laptops, and tablets. The few devices provided to teachers for their students have to be shared between students making learning slower and more cumbersome.
4. Trauma
Children refugee teachers provide their students with crucial information to improve their lives. However, stress, trauma, and PTSD can hinder this goal. Many refugees escaped their homes riddled with war, conflict, persecution, and more, which continues to haunt them as they adjust to the host country.
However, some refugees, including children, have Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that manifests in many ways. These ways include hypervigilance, poor focus, aggression, nervousness, depression, and many others.
Working through these mental blockades whenever they arise may be difficult for teachers as some may be ill-equipped to handle the delicate mental health of these young ones. Such issues can slow or even hinder education in young refugees for long periods.
5. Internet Access
Access to the intent allows teachers and students to harness additional information and further their knowledge on specific topics. A stable internet connection is also essential; public libraries are unavailable, and books come in limited supply.
However, these camps’ cyber connections could be faster and more stable, making it difficult to find that much-needed online support for tutors and students. This issue has hindered seamless education for children as learning is slower and less optimized due to the poor availability of additional resources.
While some refugee camps are being provided with internet access, the process is expensive, and some locations are in the outskirts, which need more infrastructure to begin the operation.
Improving the chances of Teachers to Teach Refugees
Teachers in these schools need additional aid to better handle the hurdle of tutoring these young ones. Some noteworthy incentives to support the teachers are annotated below:
The Teachers in Crisis Contexts Training Pack (TICC)
The Teachers in Crisis Contexts Training Pack (TICC) is an inter-agency that synthesizes current resources into single comprehensive resources to facilitate coordinated programming between partners in emergency settings.
The training pack covers five major areas, which include:
- The teacher’s role and well-being
- Child protection, well-being, and inclusion
- Pedagogy – the method and practice of teaching
- Curriculum and planning
- Subject knowledge
Each of the five major areas combines to focus on building the skills required for under-qualified refugee children’s teachers.
Teachers for Teachers
Another initiative worth mentioning is Teachers for Teachers in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya. It is a joint initiative of Teachers College, Columbia University (United States), and Finn Church Aid, a Finnish non-governmental organization (NGO).
These establishments are in partnership with UNHCR and the Lutheran World Federation to provide refugee teachers with constant development via a method that combines training classes, peer coaching, and mobile mentoring.
The training involves teachers following two concurrent tracks, a short-term session of four days and long-term training lasting several months. Furthermore, refugee teachers are given small groups and assigned a peer coach who makes the learning circles easier and performs classroom visits to help each teacher.
The mobile mentoring aspect of the program is an innovative aspect that provides teachers with an available global mentor via WhatsApp or a private Facebook group. These interactions ease the stress associated with teaching and allow teachers to feel part of a wider community of tutors so that they can accommodate their experiences and problems.
Conclusion
Education is a fundamental right, and helping refugees acquire such necessary knowledge and skills is the key to changing their lives and communities. However, achieving this goal is tricky since factors like the language barrier, poor internet, unreliable electricity, PTSD, and device unavailability threaten the plan.
Nevertheless, multiple organizations and incentives actively provide support and resources to give refugee teachers better chances to make their mission possible and change lives. Still, it may be worthwhile that to think how CSR practices across many corporates could in fact create and integrate in their yearly plan such incentives to improve the chances of such youth especially given the dire circumstances they live in. Such planning could also be part of procurement processes funded by the institutions and working with corporates to build them.
Featured photo: Uriel Mont, Pexels.
