The British Council’s education programme ‘Connecting Classrooms’ kicked off its first face to face training in Al Gazeera state after the suspension of face to face activities since mid-March 2020. Abiding by strict COVID 19 preventive measures the training reached 125 teachers, five percent of which were teachers that work in education for children with disability.
Al Gazeera state has the second biggest population in Sudan with 8 million people living there and the number of teachers and schools is the biggest in the country.
All groups were trained in Critical Thinking and Problem Solving: see below some of the appreciative feedback we got from participating teachers:
‘I have been teaching for over 40 years, yet for the first time I felt like I am learning new things, I am more than thankful to the amazing facilitators. I will change my students testing methods and stay away from closed questions that limits children ability to think critically and rely more on open questions to allow room for their creativity. Also moving my method from lecturing students into effective participation’ Azhari ALsheikh – Teacher, Algazira state.
’I used to be a teacher before becoming a principal, this training has changed my view about how to deal with children and that physical punishment will bring more damage than benefit. I also now know that learning is not a one-way road and that children can have a great part within the class and have a contribution to lead his/her own learning’. Tameem Aldar – Principal of Bandar school.
‘Very successful training that addressed the needs and it was very interesting and challenging, if I have to rate it I will give it 10/10. First of all it changed the emotional wellbeing at this hard time, second thing I will definitely change my classroom management and my personal behaviours towards students, acknowledge their capabilities and work on nurturing them using the new ideas and skills we were trained on’. Mazahir Ahmed Alfaki – Teacher at Abu Dagana school for boys.
‘The training has provided me with generous knowledge. I can describe my old teaching methods as traditional and backdated but now I am aware of various skills that I need to demonstrate and now I know that during class I should be focusing on developing my students skills. Part of my actional plan is to train the science teachers in my school, as this subject contains a huge amount of information and students will be able to understand better through visual and mind mapping’. Nooraldeen Balla – Science teacher at Ahmed Abdelaziz primary school.
Connecting Classrooms will continue delivering face to face training in the coming period in Khartoum, Al Gazeera, River Nile and Red Sea states including capacity building and policy engagement activities for the Ministry of Education.