Wakiso school trains teachers to use newspapers

Conan Businge, the Mwalimu editor with the teachers as they scan the newspaper

A glorious moment it was, for the teachers of Makd Nursery and Primary School in Nansana yesterday as they undertook a special training in using newspapers as a teaching aid.

The training at the school premises in Nansana municipality, Wakiso district was facilitated by Vision Group's Newspapers in Education (NiE) team. 

NiE, pioneered in Uganda by New Vision way back in 2003, is a global movement that promotes the use of newspapers in classroom teaching.

Jovita Ajuna helping teachers to pin their work during the training

New Vision's Features editor John Eremu said the training was aimed at empowering teachers with skills to innovatively use newspapers to deliver the curriculum. 

"A newspaper is a living textbook," Eremu said. "School children find newspapers captivating because they are current, have lots of educative information and shape critical thinking in both the teachers and the pupils since they get fresh information every day," Eremu said.

Jovita Ajuna, the Media in Education Advocacy manager noted, "NiE is not a subject, but an exciting teaching aid because newspapers simulate the real world in the classroom."

John Eremu, the New Vision's Features editor taking the teachers through the training

Dalson Kobusingye Mugisha, the director of the school, applauded Vision Group for thinking about her school. She promised to support New Vision by buying its newspapers to be used by her teachers as teaching aids.

"We are already using Toto Magazine a pullout in New Vision to teach our pupils. This time we are to buy more newspapers such that we benefit from all the products," Mugisha noted.

Conan Businge, the Mwalimu editor, advised teachers that newspapers are not supposed to substitute textbooks or the conventional teaching methods, but to supplement them.

This, to most of the teachers, was a set milestone in the schools' change of its style of teaching, for better results. 

So many schools are already embracing this move in the country, with a resultant improvement in pupils' performance.