First certificates out

All too soon we are in the last night. The discussion is lively. We think about the suitability of different methods to the conditions in The Gambia. The topic of the last night is assessment. How the assessment of learning and the assessment of competencies differ from each other?

Catering group gives us an excellent example. Earlier we were asked to give them some kind of written acknowledgment too. So we train to identify the competences related to their activities.

At the end of the training, we arrange ourselves in a corridor with a smiley face at one end and a sad face at the other end. Some of the participants feel sad because the training is ending. -This group feels like a family, someone commented. Others are near to the smiley face. They feel that they got much more than what was expected.

Teacher students get their first Certificates of Appreciation (Pedagogical tools). Now they will take a well-deserved Christmas break.

Also teacher of teachers feels happy and thankful. It's hard to imagine a more interesting case than being able to develop teaching together with representatives of a completely foreign culture. We continue working with ICT and social media materials for fundraising. We still have the opportunity for one more period of face-to-face teaching, but we are sure that communicating remotely before that will be much more easy.

Finally, how does an excellent Gambian teacher look like today? He/she is confident, focused, flexible, determinent to teach, goal-oriented, teacher by heart, clear with explanations, gives good introductions, ensures understanding AND he or she is a good motivator, uses different methods and is professional in assessment.

Methods and more methods

Due to the school holiday season, there is a limited amount of time for face-to-face teaching. That's why we choose a very practical toolkit as our approach. The set of sixteen tools offers more options for traditional lecturing and for different stages of learning. The teachers also receive the toolbox as a separate manual.

Some of the tools we propose have already been used. For example, debating events and panel discussions are organized in schools. Many of the tools that support community learning are, on the other hand, new to the teachers. The soccer World Cup has just ended, so analyzing the success factors of soccer as a mind map is interesting to everyone.

Since the teaching takes place after a long day of work, we want to offer dinner. A group of four, some of the students of Future Starts Now Gambia, prepare and serve us tasty local dishes. Eating together is also a great way to get to know each other, build trust and a sense of togetherness.

Classroom teaching begins

An exciting day today, classroom teaching begins. We meet after the teachers' working day at Future Starts Now Gambia -school. There are a total of seven teacher students from all three schools of the project. We start by defining the most central concepts and go through the basic theories of pedagogy.

As on exercise teacher students discuss their own experiences of good teachers in pairs. The end result of the exercise is the definition of a good Gambian teacher: confident, focused, flexible, determinent to teach, goal-oriented, teacher by heart, clear with explanations, gives good introductions, ensures understanding. This is a very good definition. We are excited to see if this definition takes on new dimensions during this week.