The Covid-19 crisis has given the education sector a blow. Around the globe, schools, higher learning institutions, training centres, among others, rearranged their timetables for the new academic year with a combination of in-person classrooms and online learning. In Rwanda, schools reopened physical classrooms last month after a period of more than seven months of home-schooling due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, it is evident that students will not return to the school setting as it was before. And so experts believe that educators will need to redefine their teaching approach to be able to make an impact. “There needs to be a fresh model of promoting student participation in the new normal of teaching,” says Maurice Twahirwa, an education enthusiast. Twahirwa explains that students should not be regarded as consumers of facts. “They are active creators of knowledge. Schools should not be just facilities but instead centres of lifelong learning.” Traditionally, he points out, teaching was a combination of information-dispensing and sorting out academically inclined students from others. “However, with the advent of the competency -based curriculum, teachers need to shift from a knowledge-based model to a student-based one,” Twahirwa says. Cherish Nkurunziza, a primary school teacher, suggests that her colleagues should adapt to new practices that acknowledge both the art and science of learning. “After all these months without teaching physically, we (teachers) should understand that the essence of education is a close relationship between a knowledgeable and motivated child. Today, the most important role is to know each student as an individual in order to comprehend his or her unique needs, learning style, interests, and abilities,” she says. Similarly, Pascal Ndikubwimana, a math teacher, believes that teachers need to be counsellors to their students. “With this Covid-19 pandemic, we have a responsibility to counsel students as they grow so that they are able to make better decisions in their personal lives,” he says. According to the mathematics teacher, the most respected educators are those who make students passionate participants in the instructional process, by engaging them in project-based, participatory, educational adventures. “In order to get students to truly take responsibility for their own education, the curriculum must relate to their lives, learning activities must engage their natural curiosity, and assessments must measure real accomplishments and be an integral part of learning,” Ndikubwimana says. Ndikubwimana emphasises that students should work harder when teachers give them a role in determining the form and content of their schooling. “Help them create their own learning plans and decide the ways in which they will demonstrate that they have, in fact, learned,” he says.
