Thursday, June 28, 2012

Teaching Teachers

A couple days ago I accompanied Sarah to a teachers workshop type of thing. It was being lead by a foreigner who runs a house/school for children here in the city. However, she was fluent in Hindi, so I didn't understand a lot of it.
But I did understand that she was talking about the importance of play. This is something I learned a lot about in some of my classes at Eastern. Sarah said that teachers here in India have degrees in the field that they are teaching, but rarely do they have any type of teaching training. This causes problems because a lot of teachers just don't know how to teach.
She also mentioned things like when you're teaching children English to not make them say their last name. This is because last names here are associated with your cast and we want to try and make everyone in the classroom feel as equal as possible. This workshop is actually 4 days long, but since I don't know Hindi yet I decided to not sit through it (It was also really really long) and Sarah is going so she can tell me if there is anything I should know. It's very good that there are people here willing to teach the teachers how to teach.

3 comments:

  1. That's so interesting! You already know a lot about how kids learn, so this will be a great opportunity to see it in action! Thanks for the great pictures. When does school start?

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  2. All learning should always be play, no matter where or what you're learning! =D

    Although I will say, a lot of the best countries educationally do have teachers who are experts in their field (master's degree or higher). Although it can also be a weakness like you said, it means that you have the best source possible. This is part of why educators in the U.S. aren't considered to be 'professionals' =[

    Really interesting about the last names!

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  3. I think it's wonderful that they try to make sure the children feel equal to one another.

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