Tell me a bit about yourself, where did you first hear about Brass for Africa?
My name is Maria Nakabiito, I have a degree in community psychology and I first heard about Brass for Africa eight years ago when I was in secondary school. The beautiful brass instrument players visited our school and they were playing so well, and later I found out they were Brass for Africa players.
How long have you been working for Brass for Africa?
I started working with Brass for Africa in 2017, that is three years now. However, I worked with Brass for Africa as a partner by singing along with band players some years ago.
What is your role?
As a life-skills officer now, my role is to create the curriculum, conduct trainers training sessions, our life-skills curriculum, carry out daily and weekly site visits to assess how our teachers deliver the integrated life-skills program, and write reports on the same.
Can you tell me a little bit more about the Life-Skills Brass for Africa curriculum? How did it come about and how does it work?
The Brass for Africa curriculum came about in the way that as the number of our participants grows every day, Brass for Africa decided to develop a life-skills curriculum that provides a structure for teaching life-skills through a series of modules. There are a total of eight modules, each focusing on a particular life-skill. The skills are learned through participation in a variety of activities. It works in this way, each module has been designed to teach two lessons per week, integrated into music for a period of six weeks. The module ends with an entry activity that introduces life-skills to be learned. It begins with an activity that allows instructors to evaluate the understanding of participants.
What are some of the life-skills that Brass for Africa teaches in their curriculum?
We have eight key attributes. One is communication, followed by concentration, we have teamwork, problem-solving, grit and perseverance, resilience, self-confidence, and lastly leadership skills.
What are the ways in which you implement the life skills that you are teaching?
We use videos, we have flashcards, words and pictures, we also use scenarios to bring the message home. For example, for problem-solving, we use cards with words on them, words that by definition are applicable to solving a problem in one way or the other.
Why is it so crucial to combine the life-skills lessons with music?
It is very crucial to combine life-skills lessons with music because the goal at Brass for Africa is to create brighter futures, and a lot of teaching life-skills is to help our students become model citizens and the life-skills lessons create positive behaviour change of our participants. This change takes place through a series of steps. As our participants learn music we make sure that we equip them with a life-skill to take back home. As we develop their talents, we also want to equip them with skills that will help them get on with the challenges in life.
How do you come up with new ways to teach these life-skills?
Each module is developed and divided into six weeks. We create content for each week, and after content has been developed we carry out the trainers training and also come up with tools that our teachers take every time they are going to teach.
How do you assess the students on these skills?
Brass for Africa has developed assessment tools that our teachers take every day to assess progress and to do continuous tests. Also, at every end of the module a monitoring and evaluation team come to survey and measure the progress. However, as a life-skills officer, I do daily visits in outreaches to measure the delivery and through that I am able to see how the children are adapting. As life events come we take a chance to see how our participants are doing and how they react to a particular situation.
Do you find that there is a particular life-skill that is more easily taught/picked up?
No, because one life-skill leads to the other, they all move together. For example, if I am teaching communication I will first tell the children to concentrate. By teaching communication, the students are acquiring the concentration skill indirectly. All life-skills are easy for me to teach, my fellow teachers find concentration easy to teach and others pick up problem-solving easily.
How have you seen these skills transferred into real life?
Resilience. The world currently has the problem of Coronavirus and it is a situation which has not been easy for most of us. I will give you an example of Brass for Africa teachers, it has been hard to come to the office to work, it has been hard to move from one place to the other, but the teachers have shown resilience. They have been resilient in the way that they have found every way possible to continue working, to continue learning, they have persevered even though the situation has been very hard and it is because of the skills that they have acquired at Brass for Africa. The same applies to our students, the people we teach. When the pandemic came, most of the families went to villages, but when we move in the community we found that most of our participants did not go. Even though the situation has not been too good, they are encouraging each other, they are strong, meaning they are resilient and they are ready to move on. It may not look easy for someone to put these skills into real life, but I have seen most of our participants doing so. We have a number of events at Brass for Africa, we carry out exchange days, we do fun days, we used to make big gatherings with so many people, and I knew children who used to be very shy and could not stand up in front of a big audience, standing, playing solos. So you find that now all of the participants can take place in the activities in the communities, which shows that they are now becoming model citizens and responsible people in the communities, unlike before.
Any final comments about your experience with the life-skills curriculum?
This curriculum gives each participant an opportunity to participate. For example, our curriculum is participatory learning where we give each participant individualised attention and a chance to participate. This gives us a chance to see each participant developing individually, and also as trainers we have also been able to develop and improve these skills. As you teach you realise there are so many things that you did not know, but in the process of teaching these skills you develop them indirectly. I did not know that I could speak, that I could handle training a group of big people, some of them are even bigger than me with higher statuses, that is a nice experience. It is because of the life-skills curriculum that has helped me to grow.
