S.A.F.E. – Share. Access. Flourish. Engage

Awardees: Annapurna Ayyappan (HGSE), Dhwani Shah (HGSE), Marisa Fear (HGSE)

Summary: Teachers serving preschoolers in low-income and marginalized communities across the world, are struggling with issues that are affecting their ability to do their work. From being in under-resourced schools, to being underpaid, to not having access to resources or too many resources resulting in choice paralysis, to working with students without having received sufficient training, or even support from the right specialists. In the midst of these problems, often children’s’ social-emotional needs get reprioritized and teachers struggle with balancing heavy workloads and urgent curriculum needs.

Channels of Action:

Awardees identified two channels of action:

• The need to scaffold teachers’ entry to the knowledge base of improved teaching practice with contextualized resources
• To help teachers form communities where they feel psychologically safe, give and receive support, and learn from other teachers facing similar challenges.

Mechanism:

A toolkit that enables caregivers of young children access to best practices and an opportunity to grow with the larger community of caregivers.

Project Summary:

SAFE will be an online and mobile application platform that will give teachers three resources:

• Access to curated and developmentally appropriate resources to provide solutions to problems they have been facing in their classrooms.
• Access to professional development opportunities
• Opportunity to form sub-groups of educators or educator communities that connect on either a similar challenge that they are working on or a similar shared professional interest.