Hussein’s Story: ‘Now my teaching is fun and relevant’

Hussein is one of the teachers participating in the Teachers’ Continuous Professional Development Programme in Puntland, Somalia, run by the Educate Girls, End Poverty (EGEP) project. The project is part of the UK Aid funded Girls' Education Challenge (GEC) and is also supported by USAID.

This GEC-supported project aims to help over 25,400 of the hardest to reach girls, in mainly urban areas of Somalia, to increase their educational achievements and to successfully transition from primary to secondary education or vocational and employment opportunities. These girls include internally displaced people, orphans, girls with disabilities, ethnic and clan minorities and girls in conflict-affected areas. 

Hussein is a 29-year-old English teacher at Gambol Secondary School, which more than 3,000 students attend. “I teach in overcrowded classes and I used to despair at the situation,” he recalls. “I truly believed that I couldn’t use any teaching method other than lecturing at the front due to the challenging teaching environment.”

Hussein found that several of his pupils were falling behind in English and had to take remedial classes. In order to effectively support them, Hussein took part in remedial education training run by the EGEP project. The training covers teaching skills and strategies that can be employed in both remedial and normal classes, such as inclusive learning strategies, continuous assessment techniques and local methods to make English lessons engaging. 

He is enjoying using the think-pair-share strategy. He asks all of the pupils to think individually about a problem and then work in pairs to address it. Then he invites two volunteers, one each from the girls’ and boys’ pairs, to share their work with the whole class. He believes that can be one of the solutions to eradicate male dominance in the classrooms.

“Because of how our classes are structured, they are often overcrowded meaning that group work would not work. However, one golden strategy that makes a magic impact on the participation of my students is the think-pair-share strategy. My students love it and it doesn’t need a large space. It’s a simple strategy, but it makes a big difference in my class,” Hussein says.

“The training I participated in was the best I have ever attended. I have learnt many other things that I currently use during my teaching. For instance, I have phased my classroom activities into three groups: everyone must (easy), everyone should (medium) and everyone could (difficult). I now feel that I am working with the whole class, and everyone can be included in the learning.”

Hussein is encouraged by the positive response from his students to the new teaching strategies he learned in the remedial education training. 

“My students now react to my class differently. In one of my lessons I heard them clapping when I approached the classroom. It has given me a burst of motivation. I am now planning to use two or three different strategies in the coming weeks, including the splat game. Now my teaching is fun and relevant. I am looking forward to sharing my plan with my coach during the next visit.”