Monrovia – Geri Melosh, founder and international director of Liberia Reads and the Association of Literacy Educators (ALE), on Friday, urged the Liberian government to invest in teaching primary school children to read.
Report by Bettie K. Johnson-Mbayo, [email protected]
“Reading is the foundation for national success”, she said at the 10th closing exercise and graduation ceremony for over 15 reading teachers at Dr. Emmanuel J. Hunter Academy on the Airfield.
“Teach the younger ones to read because if the foundation is created from first grade to third grade, they will do exceptionally well,’’ she said.
Melosh and her husband, Bob (a retired surgeon who served as pcv in Liberia in the 1970s) and Lyn Gray, also a former Peace Corps volunteer in Liberia in the 1970s, started Liberia Reads program in 2009.
The program started at the YMCA with two schools and four first and second grade teachers and two principals. Today, 29 schools are involved in the program, which run in Montserrado and Margibi Counties.
When the program first started, Gray and the Meloshes did most of the training. Today, Liberian teachers have taken over and are conducting the training. The goal is that Liberians will be managing the program.
Francis Guannu, a first-grade teacher, is one of the Liberia Reads trainers. Guannu participated in the program last year, and asked to be a trainer this year.
She’s is one of the four trainers who taught other teachers during the two-week program.
“We work with teachers to improve their reading and comprehension because they read, but don’t understand,’’ she said. “With time, we work with them to improve.”
Jessie Fagans is Liberia Reads training Coordinator, and principal of the exemplary school, according to AEL Dr. Emmanuel J. Hunter Academy. She teaches reading to students in kindergarten through third grade.
Ineffective reading and comprehension are major problems facing the Liberian educational system.
Wellington Wreh, a teacher of 5th-8th grade at the Spiritan Academy in Monrovia, has been with the program since 2014.
On the challenges, Melosh said at the start of the program, there were few instructional materials and the overpopulated of elementary classes.
“It is difficult to teach first and second graders to read when you have 60-70 children in one classroom,’’ she said.
Liberia Reads schools, she said, are encouraged to have no more than 30 students in the classroom.
The project, Melosh said, plans to expand and increase the number of teachers and trainers in order to build the capacity of teachers.
Bob Melosh claims Liberia Reads teachers are among the top teachers in Liberia.
Lyn Gray, country director of the Association of Literacy Educators; she adds that students are rigorously assessed before any school signs up for the program.
She said assessment is done after the teachers have undergone the training and implemented it.
There is a sharp improvement in students’ reading levels after teachers have gone through the program and taught the students how to read, she said.