Innovation Profile: Mahasati After School Programme
We are profiling the innovations of our final three teams. Here we take a deep dive into how Madrasati is using school spaces to transform educational experiences in Jordan.
Written by Sophie Lashford
In 2014, the Madrasati team were taking a short but well-earned break. They’d been tirelessly renovating over 500 school buildings in Jordan that serve both host and refugee communities and the charity’s director, Tala Sweis, was leading the team through a time of reflection and learning. They asked for the impressions of the programme from different people who had been part of the work to date; school principals, teachers, volunteers, students.
“We had so many interesting insights but at that point we felt a bit overwhelmed,” Sweis recalls, “so I still remember that moment when I called the team and I asked them a simple question, “What is your most memorable experience from your school days?” One of them said that she was part of the folklore dancing club. Another one said that during an art competition the school displayed the pictures he had drawn. Some answered about the relationships they had with their teachers, good memories and bad. At that point we started thinking that most of our memorable experiences are actually activities that we were engaged in or relationships with people. That was the eye opener for us. We started to think about how we can develop a program that can create a positive memory for the students. And that’s how the whole concept of Masahati started.”
It was a turning point. The Madrasati Initiative had already been working since their launch by Queen Rania of Jordan in 2008 on supporting the most vulnerable and underperforming public schools in Jordan to overcome the challenges they faced. Even before the Syrian refugee crisis in 2011, overcrowding in schools had had significant impacts on the quality of education and the double-shift system did little to alleviate the problems. The motivation for both teachers and students was very low. When the team met with teachers, they expressed many frustrations and were often close to burn-out. The children had little sense of belonging at the schools; there were high levels of bullying, violence and vandalism, absenteeism and drop-out. Relationships within schools and communities were strained. But that reflection process gave the Madrasati team just the spark of innovation they needed to try something different.
Same space, new concept
Moving away from focusing solely on the physical environment of the schools, the team designed a pilot for the Masahati student clubs programme, using the spaces in schools in new ways to encourage students to explore their potential, whilst building their links to their communities and society around them. It was somewhat experimental at the outset; combining social, emotional and academic learning through an after-school extracurricular programme. As the pilot developed, the core clubs became Human Rights, Sports, Photography and Creative Writing clubs and these are offered at all participating schools. Over time further optional clubs have been offered depending on the schools’ needs, including Music & Performing Arts, Learning Support Services, Culture and Heritage, Debate and Civics, Film-Making and Photography, Virtual Cultural Exchanges, Calligraphy and more.
“The clubs help you to learn things in a different way. If you are interested in photography, you learn how to take pictures, but it’s not only photography that you are actually learning, you’re also learning about sciences because of the lenses and the light, you learn civics because you will take pictures of issues that interest you. It gives you that space of expression and it gives you a skill that you can use in the future,” says Tala Sweis.
Just as they were when Madrasati were renovating schools, the buildings themselves are still important. Masahati means “my space” in Arabic and the programme seeks to build students’ sense of belonging and the positive experiences they have in school to tackle the motivation and behavioural problems. The Masahati clubs are open spaces run in public schools all throughout the school year, after-school and on Saturdays. As part of the programme, schools are equipped with instruments, supplies, and tools. The activities utilise their facilities, playgrounds, classrooms, libraries and labs but the atmosphere in these spaces during the clubs is very different.
“We provide an alternative learning space for children and at the same time, it changes the context in which the teachers and the students work together. The informal setting helps to build positive relationships between the teachers and the students as well as amongst the students themselves,” notes Tala Sweis.
It’s not just the space within the school that is transformational, but also the school’s relationship with the rest of the community. Madrasati views these schools as extensions of the community and a reflection of what is happening in it, which can be both a positive and negative. The student clubs were therefore designed to strengthen the role of the school inside the community to benefit it. This is what led to the idea of Masahati schools as community assets, one of the few entities to reach to all segments of population; whether rich or poor, rural or urban. This recognition of the unique position and value of schools in a community has led to innovative partnerships, particularly public private partnerships. To date, over 150 partners have been involved in reaching 16,000 children through the Masahati programme.
“OK, let me say this. Why is it called Madrasati or “my school”? We want to build that sense of ownership because as we always say everybody is affected by the school. So in a way, we feel that everybody can contribute to the school. We ask ourselves how we can strengthen the role of the school or have it play a more significant and empowering role in the community. This is the kind of work that we as Madrasati strive to do,” explains Sweis.
Social and emotional learning
The clubs focus on students’ wellbeing. Each of the clubs integrates core elements of communication, cooperation, team-work, critical and analytical skills. This builds the students’ social and emotional skills. Towards the end of each club cycle, the student participants are provided with an opportunity to celebrate their journey and achievements in school events and summer camps. Parents and community members are invited to be part of these celebrations, which showcase the new skills developed by their children and youth.
Key themes of equality and respect, inclusion and accepting everyone are mainstreamed into the content of every club, no matter the topic. When the teachers approach Madrasati with their own content for new clubs, they work with them to make sure these topics are also embedded. Now, Madrasati is working with the HEA to codify the programme, including these SEL elements.
“Until now we don’t have a specific framework or even specific competencies that we decided are core to Masahati. But this is something we are hoping to continue working on, we have some really good resources from our last mentoring session on the HEA with NYU TIES and we are looking forward to continuing on this specific aspect and during this year with the HEA,” says Noora El Wer, Madrasati’s HEA focal point.
This work is rooted in a national priority on social cohesion, that is recognised as a need across Jordanian society. This is a key aim of the Mahasati programme’s social and emotional learning components and there is growing evidence of its positive impact. Madrasati have already been funded on evaluation studies to see how much it impacted interpersonal acceptance, and another on beliefs in equality, inclusion and rejection of violence.
“Masahati teaches children to work with each other, to trust each other. They definitely form new bonds through Masahati. Whether it’s with other students or with teachers in the schools, it’s giving them this sense of belonging to a group. We also know that it increases school appeal. We have been asking this question during evaluations for the past five years,” explains El Wer.
Proud to be a teacher
The way that Madrasati works with teachers is important too; it seeks to give them a renewed sense of mission and purpose to overcome the issues of burnout and low motivation. They receive training to run the core clubs and then they can shape the programme in their own schools by developing other clubs, often by pursuing partnerships in the community to offer more content. As teachers begin to recognise the benefits of the clubs’ psychosocial components, they often encourage the at-risk children to join. Teachers working on the clubs receive proper compensation for extra hours worked, encouragement, recognition, school trips, and access to opportunities through the network.
“We realized early on that teachers are demotivated and they feel under-appreciated in general in Jordanian society but especially in public schools. But from our experience, if we have at least one teacher that is motivated or has that kind of excitement for our programs then it becomes contagious in the schools. So we came up with the “Proud to Be a Teacher” initiative, and since 2015 it has been implemented in parallel with Masahati,” explains Noora El Wer, M&E Coordinator.
The initiative works on the teacher’s motivation by showing them appreciation, giving them new professional development opportunities and encouraging engagement in the issues the schools face. The first step is renovating the teachers’ common rooms, which are often not very well-kept spaces. Madrasati upgrades the furniture, including a big meeting table where teachers can meet and also individual working stations. Teachers taking part in the initiative meet every two weeks to talk about either a topic that’s important to them at work, share some practices and even involve members of their community.
“So they might invite a social worker and they would gather the parents and talk about, let’s say uh, drugs or their children skipping school and they would gather and talk about the societal issues. We have been tracking their job satisfaction and burnout for the past four years and we have found positive outcomes that job satisfaction is increasing and occupational burnout is decreasing, at least some aspects of them. So this is something we are also excited to explore more in depth and to get mentorship about during the HEA to see whether our instrument is sufficient to track these things,” says Noora El Wer, Madrasati’s M&E Coordinator.
Scaling new heights
Having run the Masahati student clubs now in more than 85 schools, Madrasati Initiative has proof of concept. They now have an ambitious vision for the future; by 2035 they aim for Students’ Clubs to be impacting one million children in Jordan and the Levant, by being adopted and owned by Ministries of Education as an official program implemented by public school personnel and funded through the education budget.
To reach this goal, the Madrasati team feel strongly about evidence-based decision-making and this is what led them to apply for the HEA programme. They have been systematically gathering evidence to help them evaluate the clubs and make refinements to their work. With support from the HEA they hope to move towards effectively measuring and reporting on their impact. Linked to this, they are looking to also make more information available to schools themselves, by partnering with schools and the Ministry of Education to bring this information to school level, using a comprehensive set of sources including from the Masahati Clubs’ own monitoring and evaluation. Currently, important data about schools is held in disparate places, limiting its usefulness for schools themselves and slowing down their responses to emerging challenges. This “Data Dashboard” will help all schools rapidly identify and address priority concerns, as well as tracking their progress. The team are now in energetic pursuit of scaling the programme and embracing the mentorship process in the HEA.
“When you go to the gym for the first time and you start to exercise and then suddenly you have those sore muscles but at the same time you’re improving your fitness. So you’re thinking of the good things that come,” explains Sweis. “HEA is getting us out of our comfort area because sometimes you take for granted the way programmes are operating and you’re very comfortable with them. And then you realise there’s something else that we can do or something that we should improve or enhance so we have to adapt.”
