Penny Hollowell – UK head teacher and special education needs coordinator - Inclusive Education Adviser - Namibia
Penny Hollowell works as an inclusive education adviser in the Oshikoto region of Namibia. A predominantly rural area, teachers work in isolated circumstances with few resources and little opportunity for training and peer support. Many children were not included in classes because teachers did not understand how to cater for their different needs. Penny tells us about her work and what volunteers working in the area of inclusive education can expect.
What does your role as Inclusive Education Adviser involve?
I have three main strands. One is to raise awareness of what inclusive education is, another is to work with lower primary teachers to improve their teaching strategies and the third area is helping to identify children with learning difficulties and give recommendations to the teachers of how they can cater for them.
How did you familiarise with the Namibian context when you first arrived?
I did a survey where I met with councillors, health workers, and members of the local community and we identified over 120 children who were having difficulties and two thirds of those were not in school. I knew that was only the tip of the iceberg because only parents who were close to the constituency office or had heard about the meeting attended.
How did you then approach your role?
I started by looking at what’s happening in lower primary classes in particular, because there are too many children who are sitting in the class and not benefiting because the teaching is not a good enough standard. In so many classes the teacher writes something on the board and one learner at a time will stand up, will come to the board to answer the question while the remaining 40 sit and do nothing.
Describe something that would shock a UK special education needs teacher.
There was one learner who I was told was blind and wasn’t in school. We went to visit the learner and he did have vision but the teachers had told him not to go to school because he would strain his eyes. I was able to visit the school to give strategies and support and ask the family to take the child to the clinic. In that situation it was fairly easy to get him into school but there are other cases that are much more difficult because there’s no suitable provision for many children.
So what sort of skills are you teaching the teachers?
When I’m doing workshops for teachers, I base them very much on the school visits I’ve done and the skills that I see the teachers have got, or haven’t got. I’ve shown teachers how to play games, how to do group work and passed on very simple strategies such as showing them how learners can show answers with their hands so they’re all answering very quickly or making resources out of papier-mâché.
Have you worked with education managers in the region?
I have also done several workshops in raising awareness of inclusive education with inspectors and advisors, senior managers - talking about what their role is in inclusive education. So when they go into classrooms to observe the teacher they need to ask the question, is every learner involved? Inclusive education is the responsibility of everybody, not just the teacher.
Do you think your work is sustainable?
Namibia operates a cluster system with its schools. In this region there are 37 clusters, which is 184 schools. Each cluster has inclusive education facilitators who came to a workshop and then went back to their cluster to run a workshop so each to pass on the learning to the rest of the schools in the cluster. So ultimately hundreds of teachers across the region benefited from this one workshop.
What have you been most proud of?
I’ve done some follow up visits to schools to see if teachers are putting in place any suggestions I’ve made and some of them have. The first classroom I went in I saw a display of things I’d done in the workshop and I nearly hugged the teacher!
What skills do you think a UK special education needs teacher needs to be a good volunteer?
It would be very easy for some people to come out and think of their UK teaching experience and then come straight in and say do this, do that but you need to spend time looking to see what is happening in the classroom. Teachers at home can be very adaptable and very creative and that’s what you need to be out here. Most special education co-ordinators are very good at thinking of the next step and that’s what it’s all about here, thinking ‘how can I help with the next step?’