One of our students has been showing some great progress in their creative thinking and reasoning. In our most advanced class, this student has been responding to questions more than usual, and has really grown in confidence in this area!

Originally, when posed with a tricky school question, she would go silent, preferring to wait for a classmate to respond rather than voice her own opinion. She was very shy, and perhaps struggled to process her own responses to difficult questions. However, her teachers persisted with asking questions, and challenging her to respond with her own ideas no matter how long it might take. Recently, and excitingly, this student has begun to take the initiative, and is now answering more questions than ever.

An exciting moment in class this week was when she correctly answered a question during a class word game! During the game, students have to choose the correct word based on some verbal cues provided by the teacher. This is quite challenging as the student has to use higher-level reasoning to decide which word is the correct answer. This week, the correct word was ‘play’. This student was able to use the clue ‘You like to _ football’ to come up with the answer and share it with the whole class. There was a long pause as she took her time to think through the options, but eventually, she shouted out ‘play!’, and the entire class burst into applause!

It was brilliant to see this student answering a complex question without any help, and doing so with confidence. It was also brilliant to see how happy our local teaching assistants were as they cheered her success! To our teachers, it was a great reminder that patience, hard work, and continual encouragement can make a huge difference to our students.

We are grateful to see progress like this in our students, and continue to celebrate all the little accomplishments they make!

-Jared Scheppmann – Uganda Partner