Training Effective Afghan Teachers

The Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL) continues to make training teachers a priority. AIL has now trained over 14,000 teachers. Thus far in 2008, AIL has trained 263 teachers in AIL’s intensive, one-month, foundational pedagogy seminar and has trained 356 teachers in various workshops.

Feedback from participants in pedagogy seminars in Herat included the following comments:

Wazir, one of the participants says, “Before I came to this seminar I would write the whole lesson on the blackboard, and then explain it to the students. The class was always centered on the teacher. From this seminar I learned that students must be center of the activities.”

One of the participants that used the seminar’s methods in her classroom says, “As I used the methods in my class room I saw that the atmosphere of the class was completely changed. The students paid attention to the lesson and they took part in the activities and I really enjoyed teaching them. Her students asked her why she has not used these methods before she told them that she learnt it from AIL seminar and from now she will teach them in the same way.”

At the graduation ceremony for the seminar, Sima Shir Mohammadi head of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs spoke. She compared AIL with other organizations and said that AIL had the best educational and health programs for women and they really help the women to increase their knowledge and capacity through the trainings. She added “I know some organizations get a great deal of funding from donors for women’s projects but do nothing and waste the money. AIL runs big projects with less funds I must thank AIL. The women have been trained by AIL do good work in their jobs.”