Last week we celebrated the end of our yearly Early Grade Reading Assessments (EGRA). It was a big effort, testing children in 86 primary schools in Gulu municipal, with the last school finished the morning of the party (Wednesday). We celebrated with pork, chips, pizza and doughnuts, as well as a few speeches (of course) and some prizes for those who could correctly recall some of the reading words from the test, and the fastest reader of the passage.
Our best EGRA story comes from one of our volunteer helpers: a local teacher (Everline who works at Connect Education Centre). She was allocated a stubborn school which we had not worked with in the past. We sent a letter ahead of us to the school written by the Municipal Education Officer stating that we would be carrying out the reading test soon in their school. The school tried to avoid the reading assessment, and when that failed tried to insist that we should pay them the privilege to test their children (called a ‘sitting fee’). Haha! Teacher Everline is a sharp one, took the bait, arrived early at the school in her finest school attire and led them to believe she was from the Municipal Education Office and carried out a short school inspection before the reading test. They welcomed her with open arms! And how were their reading scores? She recommended some training.
We had a good laugh about that story during our reading test lunch; which followed by a mini photoshoot and of course a photoshoot with Myron 🙂
Teacher Everline – thanks for your quick thinking and humour!
Teacher Everline with MyronÂ
Teacher Kate with MyronÂ
Dan and Jodes... in Gulu, Uganda 