Before schools started to reopen this spring, more than 80 public education instructors in Ghana participated in virtual training sessions that featured Sesame Street Muppets Zobi and Kami, along with Ghanaian actress Matilda Asante playing their teacher Ms. Efia.

The sessions, designed to help teachers make learning interactive and enjoyable for children, originated at Sesame Workshop. They are part of a program, called the Techniques for Effective Teaching (TFET), initially developed by Sesame Workshop and the IDP Foundation (IDPF) to help improve learning outcomes in low-fee private schools in Ghana. Now TFET is being used to instruct public school teachers through an innovative partnership between IDPF, Sesame Workshop, and the Ghana Ministry of Education’s Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC).

While educational institutions were closed to in-person teaching and learning activities due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the training was delivered virtually to Professional Development Coordinators (PDCs) from all the 46 Colleges of Education in Ghana. These PDCs are currently passing on the TFET content to all 1,900 tutors at the colleges. By mid-2021, around 45,000 pre-service teachers will have been trained on the TFET curriculum.

As schools in developing countries reopen after the COVID-19 pandemic, innovative partnerships like these are needed more than ever to create engaging classrooms, improve access to education, and close the learning gap for students in underserved communities, where progression from primary to secondary school was already low.

Read the full article about education partnerships in a post-pandemic world by Corina Gardner at Getting Smart.