The development of my research question, “How does community support impact the

educational attainment of Senegalese females”, took a few revisions following critiques from

my peers and TGC staff members at the Symposium and again during our debriefing session in

Dakar. My goal in writing this research question was to ascertain if there was a notable

difference in the perceived encouragement of Senegalese females to get an education as

compared to their male counterparts. My supporting questions were intended to serve the

purpose of further exploring what support looks like and who in the female students’ lives

rendered said support. When I arrived in St. Louis, Senegal, I primarily had access to middle

school students and teachers. With this in mind, I was able to conduct brief interviews with a

small sample of female students at the CEM Abdoulaye Mar Diop school. The interviews that

I conducted were informal and consisted of me randomly selecting female students and getting

their permission to ask them questions after I introduced myself to them. Because I am not

fluent in Wolof or French, I relied on my host teacher, Aissatou Ba, to interpret my questions to

the students and relay their responses to me so that I could transcribe their responses. I began

the interviews by introducing myself and then asking them a short series of questions that

addressed who they were, what their goals were, their feelings about education and the

identification of supports and/or hindrances in the educational attainment.

Overall, the female students expressed that their families supported their educational careers

and the young girls described how their families worked hard to make sure that they had the

items needed for their studies. I inquired about the students’ responsibilities outside of the

classroom and if they interfere with their schooling. All students said that their responsibilities

included housekeeping, working for her family in some capacity such as selling ice pop treats or

securing ice to pack fish to take to the market. All but one student said that they felt their

family fully supported and encouraged them to get an education. The one student said that she

was dissuaded from going to school by her aunt who lived with the same household with the

young girl, her older sister, mother, father and ailing grandmother. The young lady shared with

me that he aunt said that since the mother and father went to the market early each morning

and since the older sister was unreliable, the aunt was tasked with caring for the grandmother

and did not want to face this responsibility alone. What I gleaned from my brief interviews with

the young ladies is that they are very similar to the young ladies in my class who have

responsibilities outside of their school work such as babysitting, housekeeping and assisting

their parents in some fashion.

In reflection, I found that the young ladies seemed to be forthcoming and eager to share. If I

had the opportunity to redo this interview, I would have typed the questions, had them

translated in Wolof sent them in a Google doc to my host teacher prior to my arrival so that a

larger number of female students might have had the opportunity to share their viewpoints. If I

had the responses prior to my arrival, I may have been able to disaggregate the data from the

responses that I received and been able to formulate additional guiding questions which could

ultimately have led to a meaningful discussion about their responses. Another thing that I

would have done would have been to compile a list of questions for the male and female

educators at CEM Abdoulaye Mar Diop school. From our meeting with FAWE, I found out

that some female students are dissuaded from attending school during their cycle which

can cause females to lose out on a week of academic instruction per month. Also, some

females opt not to attend school because of the possible physical attacks against them

that are fairly common. With this in mind, a lingering question that I would like the

answer to is: how intentional are teachers about the way that they educate females?