Mindjoy Community Coaches: the moms and aunts helping children love learning
We’re building learning communities where children love to learn.
Coaches are essential to the Mindjoy learning communities. They guide from the side, and encourage curiosity, motivate and build confidence. When children face a roadblock coaches are there to check in and practice with them. Sometimes parents need a bit of help too and our coaches help them on this journey too!
Most of us have laptops and probably struggle to imagine doing deep work on our phones. But for most of the children doing Mindjoy all they have is an old Android, often shared with their siblings or parents. It’s been amazing to see how both children and their parents have realized that phones are not just for playing games or chatting to friends, but can easily be used to practice maths.
Over the past few weeks we’ve seen children go from struggling to login and navigate apps to becoming independent wizzes who know exactly where to find assignments, practice and complete research in e-books to answer questions they might have. The children also think this style of learning is cool and they’re proud of the fact that they are in control of their learning.
Together we are helping children develop confidence in their abilities and the understanding that they aren’t dependent on their teachers to learn new things. They’ve figured out that when they’re curious about the world around them they can research it through books through Epic or simply by typing their question into Google . We’ve been so pleased to see how children show up for classes (in person and online), how their confidence and eagerness to participate has grown through having connection to kind, caring coaches and a positive learning environment. We’re excited to continue in sharing this vision and experience with many more South African children.
There is a lot excitement about using your mobile devices for maths and having access to a digital library of over 40 000+ books!
We see a huge opportunity in building learning communities that value self-education, particularly in communities where schools are perceived to be the only place where one can learn. Mindjoy is at the forefront of this mindset shift in helping children and parents take charge of their own learning, coaches are the driving force behind this change. They are aunts and moms who are making learning happen for the children in their communities.
More about Mindjoy
We’re building learning communities where children love to learn. We place children in learning pods based on skill and match them with a learning coahc to support their learning journey.
We have a data driven approach to learning with apps such a Khan Academy and Lalilo allows us to see where the children achieve mastery of skills and where they need support this way Mindjoy is able to adapt lessons to support children’s knowledge gaps and provide them with targeted practice activities for effective learning.
Weekly missions support the development of disciplined practice in maths and literacy as well as a weekly project based lessons that allow for real world learning and discovery. We connect and share our work or questions via Class Dojo. We’re also exploring STEAM projects and the Dalai Lama’s SEE Curriculum (Social Emotional and Ethical Learning). Our approach to facilitation is based the best learning science research focused on encourage lifelong learning.
Help us achieve our goal of making learning joyful for 100 children by becoming a social investor by funding 1 child.
How you can Support:
- Connect with a student who needs support with their learning by visiting https://mindjoy.com/fund-a-child.
- Fund a child’s learning. R1000 funds their 2 months of learning support with the Mindjoy programme.
- Be part of the journey. Receive updates about the student’s learning journey.
- Share this story with your networks :)
