Muppets in a Healing Classroom: Use of Multi-Media in Preschools in the Syria Region

• In Event: Poster session III
  In Poster Session: Poster session 3

Proposal

Investments in early childhood have been found to be one of the most cost-effective strategies for long-term economic, health, and social well-being of both individuals and their broader societies. In the Syria region alone, millions of children are at risk for failing to reach their developmental potential due to malnutrition, poverty, and lack of adequate early learning opportunities. Forced to live through unspeakable violence at home or flee to unfamiliar lands, these children face added disadvantages associated with exposure to violence, displacement, and family separation, and are vulnerable to the long-lasting effects that prolonged stress has on the developing brain. Without intervention, they face cognitive, physical, and social-emotional delays and difficulties that impact how they learn, grow, and interact with others.

To begin to address the monumental challenge and importance of early development for children affected by the Syrian crisis, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Sesame Workshop have together created a comprehensive set of interventions to restore hope and opportunities to this generation and those to come. The partnership, funded by MacArthur Foundation’s 100%Change grant, includes direct services for children and caregivers, as well as a mass-media strategy, reaching over 9 million children and their families in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. This poster will specifically focus on the project’s early childhood classes, which bring together Sesame Workshop’s multi-media content for young children and IRC’s Preschool Healing Classrooms approach in order to deliver holistic, engaging, and fun lessons to 3-5 year olds in formal and non-formal education settings. It will also include demonstrations and viewings of key content from the first year of implementation.

The poster will display the key steps for integration of Sesame Workshop content into IRC’s Preschool Healing Classrooms materials, as well as preliminary teacher classroom observation results on the use of multi-media resources (videos, storybooks) in the classroom and the types of media that are most engaging to children and teachers. Through the teacher classroom observations, IRC and Sesame Workshop will explore and present qualitative and quantitative findings related to the following questions:
•How are teachers using multi-media resources to achieve learning objectives?
•What resources are the most used by teachers in the classroom? Why?
•What resources most engage children in learning?
•What is the best method for dissemination and viewing of media content?
•What are teachers’ beliefs about the value and sustainability of each type of resource?
•In what ways can multi-media content be infused into teaching practice in resource-lean contexts?

Authors

• Mackenzie Matthews, International Rescue Committee

• Katelin Wilton, IRC