How are your classrooms teaching the skills to resolve tensions and conflicts so as to find the “common ground” in an increasingly diverse world?

A contribution to the Top Global Teacher Bloggers 2018 Series How are your classrooms teaching the skills to resolve tensions and conflicts so as to find the “common ground” in an increasingly diverse world? What an important question at a time when the world rhetoric seems to be about ‘divide and rule’, finding and exaggerating…

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Miriam’s First Academic Article Published!

As many of you may know, our Country Director, Miriam Mason is working towards her PhD at the University of Durham. Unsurprisingly, her research relates to training teachers in Sierra Leone, a topic close to all of our hearts. As Miriam’s research has progressed, there are a number of academic articles relating to her work…

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Literacy Skills for Sierra Leone in 21st Century

To what extent do you believe the literacy skills required for a new world will be more or less the same as they were before? Will new literate practices need to be generated and does that mean that new literacies be required?  If so, what do you think these new literacies will be and how…

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Taking Climate Change Seriously in our Schools. What are your best Tips for Teaching About Climate Change in Your Classroom?

Taking Climate Change Seriously in our Schools.  What are your best Tips for Teaching About Climate Change in Your Classroom? Contribution to the Global Teacher Series 2018 Strangely, and somewhat frustratingly, it has been quite difficult over the years to get our students in Sierra Leone to think about taking their part in protecting the…

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How are you promoting well-being, health and happiness in your classrooms?

How are you promoting well-being, health and happiness in your classrooms? Contribution to The Global Teacher Series 2018   The Battle For The Mind Physical and emotional safety are usually pre-requisites to us being willing to take risks.  Risk-taking is usually a pre-requisite for trial and error leading to healthy growth and development.  As a…

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How do we instil a better idea of risk taking and struggle in students?

This post is from the Top Global Teachers blog series. Find out more at www.cmrubinworld.com The western world is moving towards lifestyles that require less and less resilience.  Physical hardship for many children is becoming a rarity as western parents live up to their dreams of making their children’s childhoods free from suffering. These parents find…

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IN A 21st CENTURY WORLD, TEACHER LEARNING NEVER STOPS

  IN A 21st CENTURY WORLD, TEACHER LEARNING NEVER STOPS —Technology is quickly and forever changing. The moment teachers master one new piece of ed-tech, there may be something newer you need to know more about. Teachers attend professional development sessions of all kinds. If you were calling the shots, how would you change ongoing…

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Exploring Genius Time in Schools

Companies like Google allow employees to spend “20% time” – that is 20% of their time working independently (on concepts they think will most benefit Google) – the goal being to inspire creativity and innovation.   Some significant advances have happened and  “20% products”  include the development  of Google News, Gmail, and AdSense.  How could this…

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How important is teaching ethics in the classroom? How do we instil a moral compass in every student?

When we teach, we are the catalysts for the development of the next generation. As Helen Caldicot said, ‘Teachers are the most responsible and important members of society because their professional efforts affect the fate of the earth.’ There are of course the reductionist and utilitarian approaches that see education as preparation for jobs but…

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How to we teach young people the rigorous critical thinking and research skills to distinguish news from propaganda?

How do we ensure the next generation is one which communicates civically, values honesty and recognises reality? Most of our students are accessing education in their third language, having been raised in one of the wealth of local languages as small children, acquiring the lingua franca Krio as they meet others from other language groups…

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How do you help students accept and work well with people of different beliefs, cultures, languages, socio-economic statuses, education backgrounds, and learning styles?

Sierra Leone is composed of 17 major tribal groups, all speaking different languages. Muslims make up the majority of the population, but Christians account for approximately 30% of the population. There are not so many foreigners from other African countries: a few Liberians and the occasional Guinean who have ended up in Sierra Leone, but…

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