USAID’s Building Education Support Systems for Teachers (BESST) project will launch an accelerated learning program for Afghan teachers this spring.  The program will offer an opportunity for teachers who did not complete secondary school to earn a high school diploma.   

To prepare for the program launch, BESST held a workshop to draft study guides for the program, led by a consultant from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).  Afghan experts in all subjects joined the consultant and BESST education officers in an intensive process involving group work and peer feedback to produce 80 one-page topic explanations.

These secondary school-level study guides cover subject areas such as math, science, language arts, and social sciences.  The guides will be used by teachers in small-group tutoring sessions and in self study to help them develop the content knowledge, and academic skills needed to obtain a secondary school diploma.

“For years, many Afghan teachers were hoping to get the opportunity to participate in an accelerated learning program.  Now their dreams are coming true,” said Suhaila Tanha, Dari language expert and writing workshop participant.  Ms. Tanha added, “The other good thing about this workshop is that the material we developed is based on the actual subject and methodological needs of Afghan educators.”