Teacher interviews
I am very fortunate. I get to meet some of the most impressive teachers on the planet. For my own teaching and learning, I find nothing more inspiring than a good conversation with a teacher friend. Fortunately, the world is a small place, if you have an internet connection, a web cam and a cup of coffee.
In articles about fantastic teachers, I notice that their is often a focus on WHAT teachers do, but they rarely focus on HOW they do it. I have therefore started a series of interviews with teachers from all over the world to ask them HOW do you teach?
The teachers I talk to connect learning to meaningful actions, they are change makers. I want to know, how they encourage their students to be on board, what a typical first lesson looks like, how their teaching changed over the years and why.
Other teachers are sometimes skeptics: How could you change the world AND make sure there is "enough" learning involved? These teachers are the living proof: Meaningful learning isn't a contradiction to fantastic results. Their actions for Global Citizenship are awesome testimonials for Global Goal Education.
Do you want to be one of my next interview partners?
Destroying Poverty in Sierra Leone
Miriam Mason-Sesay is a Top 50 Finalist of the Global Teacher Prize and a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. She was a teacher in the UK for eight years before she visited Sierra Leone. First, she funded education for children, but then realized: They need good education and we'll have to start schools that can provide the best possible education.
She started with 20 children and now is the head of nine primary and secondary EducAid schools with 3,200 students and 190 teachers who are mostly her former students. She leaves no doubt that "Education will destroy poverty!" Her results show that a strive for excellence and "We instead of me" can change communities for the better.
Problem-Solvers in Morocco
Souad Belcaid is a teacher of all subjects at the American School in Tangier, Morocco. She is a finalist of the inaugural Global Teacher Prize and has worked as a teacher in Massachusetts, Kansas City, Egypt and Morocco. In 2007, she received a Teacher of the Year Award after having taught in the Milton Public Schools’ French immersion programme for 12 years.
In Mareike Hachemer's interview with her, Souad talks about projects - like a project to help work against overfishing in Morocco - that helped students think as problem-solvers and change makers, and made them overcome prejudice towards people with special needs. Souad involves parents in her lessons in beautiful ways. In the video, her students show us some of their learning results, like an oven that was built in the classroom.
Young Scientists in the USA
From teacher to teacher: How do you teach? Mareike Hachemer asks Global Teacher Prize Finalist and Pennsylvania Teacher of the Year 2017 Mike Soskil about his teaching methods: How to do distance-learning with 70 different countries and the International Space Station? How to introduce 10-year-olds to scientific methods? How to share insights about teaching and learning with other professionals? Watch this - because "every problem that the world faces has a solution locked inside the passions of our students".
Unfortunately, there is a little delay in Mareike's audio, so sometimes it sounds like she is interrupting Mike. It should be easy enough to understand everything though.