TEACHER TRAININGS

Most communities in this situation are situated in remote locations. Teachers in these communities have limited access to teaching materials. They are not aware of building a safe learning environment for their students, and thus tend to be overly strict. Classes in the public middle and high schools are frequently taught by inexperienced teachers using Soviet-era texts and methods. The result is instruction that is often boring and ineffective. Students may learn to repeat what the teacher says, but there are few interactive lessons and little, if any, creative thinking.

In many areas of the Rasht District, teachers have low levels of education and poor pre-service training, which results in bad outcomes for children in basic literacy. 

The project mentored new English teachers in these rural areas who will replace teachers who are retiring or leaving the profession.

1. Teacher Training in Tajikabad Distric of the Rasht Valley, 2016

Head of local department of education opens the training

In April 2016, I conducted three days teacher training with 12 local English teachers of the Tajikabad district which is 250 km from the capital of country. The teachers came from very rural areas and did not have any access to updated teaching materials. So I funded this project myself from my salary that I saved for 6 months. 

The following activities carried out in this project:

• Learning strategies/styles
• Classroommanagement
• Studentmotivation

2. International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX)-Global Teacher Small Grants, 2015

As a Teaching Excellence and Achievement Program (TEA) alumnus I received a small grant to carry out teacher trainings. The goal of the project was to conduct three workshops and introduce newer, more inclusive teaching methods for English teachers under Teacher Resource Center that will take place in Navdi Village and inform participants about professional development opportunities.

Participants increased knowledge about:

• effective teaching methods and useful classroom activities
• games such as running-dictation, face to face, worksheets, crossword puzzles, word matching, and verb search games that  helped participants/beneficiaries to teach/learn English easily.
•  building a communication chain between me as a TEA alumni and local teachers as an ongoing source of information and support
• knowledge on forming groups, learning strategies/learning styles, classroom management, student motivation, characteristics of effective teaching, teaching large classes and advices for novice teacher
• professional development opportunities and educational exchange programs of the U.S. Embassy and Department of State

Playing "Face to Face"

Direct Beneficiaries

- Fifteen English teachers who already teach in secondary schools from different remote villages throughout Rasht District

- Ten novice teachers, two from each district of rural and mountainous Rasht Valley (Rasht, Nurabad, Sangvor, Tajikabad and Laksh districts) who start working in 2015

- A supervisor in charge of English language teaching and a representative from the Department of Education in Rasht District, both of whom will participate in the teacher training

Indirect Beneficiaries

- An estimated 2,400 pupils in Rasht Valley currently attending 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th grade classes taught by the participating teachers

- The future students of these teachers

- One person from the local government and another from the Department of Education, who will take part during the project implementation

3. Teacher Training grant funded by the Regional English Language Office (RELO), Central Asia, in Astana, Kazakhstan, 2014.

To address the serious issues facing English teachers of the rural villages of the Rasht district, this project created Teacher Resource Center and recruit twenty four English teachers from different schools in the district and—from April, 2014 through November, 2014 – conduct  teacher training for them on the following topics:

• Learning strategies
• Learning styles
• Classroom management
• Student motivation
• Characteristics of effective teaching
• Peer observation
• Teaching large classes

These seminars introduced newer, more inclusive teaching methods and demonstrate learning activities that I have acquired through the TEA and E–Teacher Scholarship Programs and during his study abroad. Participants shared ideas and discussed ways to make their lessons more fun, easy and engaging. The project also consisted of teacher observation in their schools to assess their effectiveness.

Goal: To create Teacher’s Resource Center and train selected teachers from the Rasht district (to have access to updated information and teaching materials and share their knowledge and experience of teaching) in effective teaching methods and useful classroom activities, to build a communication chain between me as a TEA alumni and local teachers as an ongoing source of information and support, and to conduct follow-up observations to assess the effectiveness of this training.

Targeted Beneficiaries:

Direct beneficiaries of the project were:

· Twenty four teachers of English (two groups of 12) from 14 community centers through Rasht district

·  One supervisor in charge of English language teaching and one representative from the Department of Education of the Rasht district, both of whom participated in the teacher training

Indirect beneficiaries of the project were:

• An estimated 2,400 pupils currently attending the 8^th, 9^th, 10^th, and 11^th grade classes taught by the participating teachers
• The future students of these teachers
• Two people including one from the local government and another from department of education representatives took part during the project implementation

4. Alumni Small Grants, 2011, U.S. Embassy, Tajikistan

Teacher trainings in 6 rural villages:

Participants:                 60 local English teachers; (10 local English teachers in each villages);

Topics taught:                                  

Learning styles/strategies, group work and using games in ESL classroom; I enlarged the area of conducting teacher trainings by visiting remote villages of the Rasht district.

Duration:                           6 days (1 day per village);

5. Alumni Small Grants 2010, U.S. Embassy, Tajikistan

                                                   
Participants:                                      10 local English teachers;

Topics taught:                                  

Learning styles/strategies, group work and using games in ESL classroom;

Duration:                                            2 days;

Parent – Teacher Meetings

Once a month, I organized parent-teacher meetings. During these meetings, we discussed how we can help children to promote their progress in learning. I also encouraged my students to tell if they have any difficulties or suggestions that might help us to improve. Also, to the parents, I asked questions related to English such as reading, speaking, retelling and translating so it helped both of us, teachers and parents, to monitor the pupils’ learning. Because when the students feel that teachers and parents are in close contact, they become more responsible, try their best, and become competitive with their peers. 

The pupils and parents proposed to make a list of lesson participation of parents every lesson. This also gave my pupils and I a greater focus on learning, teaching, providing both of us feedback to improve teaching and learning. We usually tried to find the best and easiest ways to help children with homework and tests as well as reviewing report cards and progress reports. In addition, we discussed how our kids get along with peers both in class and during breaks, the habits of our children, their strength and weaknesses, and other services to help our children to grow as real learners. 

From my teaching experiences I believe that both teachers and parents have the same goal: To help children become successful in learning and grow as learners. Other topics that were discussed in this meeting included children’s relationship with their peers as well as their habits, behaviors, strength, weaknesses, and social development.