Keep on pushing ;-)

In my blog post “From Ideas into Action” I wrote about the work I did with the students at the Sharif Education Complex during my stay in Lahore, Pakistan. Today is the teacher’s turn;-)

In various Q&A sessions with the teachers we discussed the following we_school principles:

• Celebrate Diversity!
• Learning over education
• Student-centered learning
• Solution-based Learning
• Prototyping and Entrepreneurial thinking within the curriculum
• The “Art of letting go”
• Where do the kids learn?
• Integration of community work within the curriculum

And the big final was a 3 hour open space with the goal to find ideas for implementing “new ways of teaching and learning” tomorrow. I was told that most of the teachers were familiar with the method – however many of them acted very shy. Only 9 of them stepped forward to propose a project.

Maybe it was because we called them in on a holiday;-)

But the results are very promising and the teachers were very engaged when I walked around in the groups. Together with their principal Zarin Shoaib the teachers will follow up on these outcomes:

• Additional learning and working material besides the regular textbooks
• Project Based Learning
• Create “departments” for the various disciplines >>> English department, art department, math department … >>> this way the students can move on in the disciplines they are good at and “remain” in those in which they are not performing well
• Kids teaching kids
• How to motivate students better
• How to improve working in groups
• Concept based learning
• Activity-based curriculum
• Mydah’s project >>> fostering imagination

The next step will be to write a proposal what exactly is meant by these ideas and how they can  be translated into daily life.