HIV/AIDS Teacher’s Guide

This teacher’s guide provides teachers with assistance in using the Heinemann Junior Africa Writers (JAWS) HIV/AIDS series, an illustrated educational resource to teach children in Africa about HIV/AIDS and related issues. The JAWS series includes fiction readers, non-fiction information books, and curriculum material for use in the classroom and outside. The books are clustered according to their reading level and can be purchased in French or English.

This teacher’s guide is designed to inform and provoke discussion about HIV and AIDS. The readers run from lower primary titles through to upper secondary level and are intended to provide children with the knowledge, skills and values they need to face HIV/AIDS. The readers strive to be gender sensitive, issues-based and empowering, enabling children and youth acquire all the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values they need to protect themselves. The publishers believe they are ideal for interactive learning. This teacher’s guide provides guidance on how to use the series to create a classroom space for questions, arguments, reflection and discussion.

The ten themes that the JAWS series addresses are:

• Feelings
• Life skills
• Death, loss and grief
• Stigma and discrimination
• Information about HIV/AIDS
• Gender, power and human rights
• Prevention
• Care and Support
• Normalisation and disclosure
• Orphans and vulnerable children

The guide discusses that all schools should be setting up holistic programmes of support for children affected by HIV/AIDS, such as orphans, that include making sure they have help with school fees, a school garden to provide food and help with accessing social welfare grants. This Guide is designed to give extra information on topics related to HIV/AIDS so you can speak with confidence in your classroom. It also gives ideas for additional activities. The guide follows the ten themes on which the series is built.

The publication states that many of the stories in the series are based on real life. By placing messages about AIDS into a real-life context they help learners think about how decisions are made within a context of family, peers and community. The publishers say, “Through reading an engaging story about someone like them learners find out about HIV/AIDS in an informal way without realising they are learning. We know this is a more effective approach than lecturing children and young people. Stories are also a good medium for dealing with difficult issues like grief and fear as they allow some emotional distance and also model coping strategies for learners.”

All of the stories have teacher’s notes that highlight important issues in the books. There are also activities to do in the classroom in each book, including discussion activities. According to the writers it is important to allow learners to talk about a book once they have read it as this is when they relate what they have learned to their own lives.