By Adama Kone, Teacher Project Manager

One of the biggest challenges facing students in Mali is the fact that school is not taught in their mother tongue language. Instead, schools use French for instruction and often leave students behind if they aren’t able to pick up French quickly in primary school. This year, we piloted the French Language Intervention Project (FLIP), designed to help 7th graders brush up their French skills as they enter middle school.

Last month, I shared the story of one of our students who participated in the FLIP pilot. I also shared a student story from Sata T. Today I would like to share the feedback from a teacher, Mr. Saibou Coulibaly:

“I am Saibou Coulibaly, a French teacher at Harman Family Middle School. I am so proud to be a teacher because it gets me closer to kids and helps me support my family. I also contribute to my nation development. I am 35 years old and a father of three kids.

Being the school’s French teacher, I just gave eight FLIP French classes to forty students among my seventh graders. I felt so proud to help those forty students from Harman Family Middle School!

We had great times all together while teaching them French language. I am sure those classes helped my students improve because they always showed me their interest in learning more by participating in different exercises like reading and vocabulary Giving these extra classes to my students even made me like my job more since it my students were more interested in them and wanted to learn more all the times.

My favorite part was when I gave the students their certificates that Mali Rising. When I gave the certificates I even realized I was doing one of the great things about my job which is helping students improve during extra times.

The moment was so emotional to me because I was happy to see my students smiling while giving them the certificates. I told them they should never forget this moment because many students graduated from middle schools but did not get the chance to receive any certificates like this.  I also realized that I never gave this type of certificates to my students before. So it has been a great pleasure and an unforgettable moment for me.

It has been a privilege for me to help them and it gave me the chance to understand how much extra classes in different ways could be useful to students from now on.

I just wanted to be thankful to Mali Rising as well for their generosity because I know that there are many schools that did not get this chance. So thank you, Mali Rising Foundation!”

Learn more about our work with teachers in our Teachers Project.