First Refugee Focus Group with Afghan teachers!

2011 group with refugee teachers

September 29, 2012

We just completed our first focus group with the refugee teachers! The photo above is from an earlier teacher group, and we will update with a more current photo from today's group asap. We will also provide a report of the results of the focus group(s) soon.

Our first meeting was with Afghan/Iraqi/Iranian refugee teachers and head teachers. The next focus group will be with Burmese teachers next week.

Our questions of interest:

1. How can we best develop a relevant training program? To get this information, we ask the teachers about:

• Refugee students behavior, emotional, and cognitive challenges and strengths
• Strategies the teachers use to manage their behavior, emotions, and attention in class
• Stresses teachers experience in dealing with children’s behavior and emotions, and how teachers manage their self-care

2. To get information on the community and school environment to help with implementation of the intervention:

• Potential allies and partners (a. NGOs; b. individuals; c. refugee communities/schools; d. refugee teachers)
• Logistic and practical concerns that will affect conducting refugee teacher training in the communities (including: What’s the actual number of teachers and students per refugee school?)
• How achieve long-term sustainability of training, especially providing training for new refugee teachers

  We were so thrilled to get insights from our first refugee teachers for this project! More soon...