Training Effective Afghan Teachers

The Afghan Institute of Learning has been chosen by the Afghan government to participate in a 5 year project to train teachers with a focus on teachers from  rural areas. A lot of teachers in Afghanistan are not professionally trained and if they have had training it was not in modern, interactive, student centered methodologies. The new methods of teaching promote critical thinking, problem solving and emphasize student engagement. There is a great need for this type of training of teachers in the country.The work on this initiative has begun and here is the information from one teacher training which took place in a rural district of Herat Province on the  border with Iran. 

The teacher training seminar was 10 days long with 39 elementary to high school teachers participating (15 female, 24 male) ranging in age from 21 to 61. The teachers all live and work in a rural, remote district which is 116km from Herat and is considered an insecure area. Most of the teachers are new hires and recent graduates of 12th grade school.  AIL is accepted and trusted by the community because of its long history of providing education and so was chosen to give trainings in this area.

The topics in the seminars included lesson planning, characteristics of a good teacher, question types, exams, kinds of teaching methodologies, annual plans and psychology.

Abdul a high school teacher said,  “I have had many challenges since I became a teacher. One of the biggest was I  was not able to make lesson plans. I was blamed by the principal  for this several times. The auditors criticized me for not having lesson plans for my students. My students didn’t show interest in the lessons and I was always behind on time. I couldn’t finish teaching the book. I was worried about this all the time. I was asking myself, “Can I continue like this? Will a new teacher replace me?” I learned a lot through participation in this workshop. It has been helpful and a relief for me as most of my problems are now solved. I will continue teaching more enthusiastically from now.”

Dear Friends,

Providing quality teaching is at the core of AIL’s education philosophy. You cannot have  good education systems preparing students for today’s world, without highly trained teachers who foster critical thinking skills in their students and use modern teaching methods.

In the first six months of 2016, AIL trained 398 teachers (234 female).  Teachers who attend AIL seminars learn about how to teach, how to structure time and deal with discipline. They also learn about psychology and how to encourage student participation and self- confidence. Students are taught to think for themselves, use logic and reasoning to analyze problems and express their opinions. Here is a story from one teacher:

Afsana is one of the teachers who participated at this seminar. She said, "I am 23 years old, and it is my second year of teaching. I remember that last year when I was teaching, as much I tried to finish the teaching book by the end of year to my students, I could not do it. Finally the education year finished, I couldn't teach my students many of the issues that were very important because of a lack of time. I was sad about the problem and didn't know what to do. Fortunately this problem was solved at this seminar. All the seminar subjects were learnable for me, and I learned the skill of making lesson plans. This helps us know how much to teach each day and using that scale determine all the issues we want to cover in a year. I have learned now that I should make an annual plan at the beginning of the year to cover all topics and teach each day according to that plan."     

Thank you for helping a teacher in Afghanistan!