Overview:

The Teacher Training Program and Teacher Guide were designed by several educators with teaching experience in Southeast Asia. The common teaching method we witnessed is a typical back-and-forth ‘teacher speaks, students repeat’ strategy. A lot of memorization, chanting, but lacking in creativity or critical thinking skills. This is a difficult method to maintain, especially with students who may have attention-deficit issues or are more timid to participate.

Our Approach:

Our program was designed to provide teachers with innovative teaching methods to spice up their lesson planning. The activities are a combination of drawing, partner, and group activities that can be applied to any topic in our Picture Dictionary and beyond.

The purpose of the trainings is to build a teaching community and encourage more creative teaching methods that might be outside of the educators’ comfort zone — in communities where school may not be an option.

How It Works:

Each teacher receives a copy of our Teacher Guide, which complements the Rohingya Picture Dictionary (student book). For every page in the Student Book, we provide the following in the Teacher Guide:

• Learning Objectives
• Discussion Points
• Drawing Activity
• Partner Activity
• Group Activity

During each session, the teachers go through each page and discuss learning objectives, discussion points, then participate in all activities themselves.

We encourage the teachers to try all of the activities together before implementing in their own classroom. The activities are a mixture of icebreakers and activities to get the kids moving around the room.

At the final session, teachers are assigned to design and deliver an innovative lesson plan with the class of teachers.

All teachers must participate in the lesson and vote on which teacher delivered the most effective, interactive lesson. The winning teacher is awarded a prize.

After the teachers complete their training, we print & distribute Rohingya Picture Dictionaries and notebooks / pens to all of their students.

Every 3 months for up to 1 year, we conduct follow-up surveys with all teachers who received our training and books.

We conduct this training through support by private donors. We also get hired by organizations to provide trainings to their local teachers.