Academic Enrichment Grant 2024-2025 Project Summary

Jennifer Chinenye

The goal for this project is to change social norms and increase student’s agency in Nigerian schools.  Currently, classrooms lack creative and critical literacy due to insufficient teacher training, learning materials that reflect experiences of marginalized populations, and resistance from dominant voices preferring non-questioning authority.  Often, the young people in rural areas of northern Nigeria face a high dropout rate because of the social and structural barriers that exist in their everyday lives.  Literacy Amidst Violent Conflict will be designed around a young adult novel – Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani.  The characters in the novel share the same cultural and religious backgrounds as many of the students who will participate in this project.  The project will take shape as a twelve-week after school book club for grades 7 through 10.  Pre and post reading activities will include a Readers Theatre, poetry, quick writes, drawing, and photography to allow students of all abilities to engage and provide their own analysis of events happening around them.

This project will be the first initiative in rural northern Nigeria to implement a social justice-oriented pedagogy that schools can engage in as peacebuilding efforts to combat the silence, confusion and helplessness that too often permeate classrooms in times of violence. The project hopes to help students most affected by the violent conflicts in rural communities to increase their motivation to learn and acquire critical thinking and problem-solving skills essential for lifelong learning.

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