In the next several months, I will be running a long-term Science Teacher Training program through The US Embassy’s Book Bus Teacher Empowerment Program. The program begins on January 12, 2018. Reproduced below are the program details as they appear in the Program information brochure.
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The U.S. Embassy Book Bus presents Everyday Science: Learn, to Teach; Teach, to Learn
Organized by Satori Center for the Arts and Quixote’s Cove
Everyday Science: Learn, to Teach; Teach, to Learn is an inspirational empowerment program for secondary school science teachers. Central to the program is the idea that as a teacher you have to be open to learning. The program helps teachers be open to learning: learning to teach science; learning to use local resources; learning to use their own interests, hobbies and skills; learning to make science fun and pertinent.
Our Objective
Everyday Science has the following objectives:
- To give science teachers a broad view of the context, role and relevance of science education in both formal and informal education in the country and build a critical attitude towards teaching, learning and doing science in the classroom
- To give teachers the ability to impart higher thinking skills to students as identified in Bloom’s Taxonomy and thus improve learning outcomes of students
- To understand the importance, relevance and value of what is available locally in science education for curriculum design and lesson planning
Program Structure
Everyday Science is a program in which teachers will receive trainings and support over the course of a school year on how to plan and deliver lessons successfully, and assess students learning. It has two thematic phases:
Training Phase: Trainings are intensive and held to prepare teachers for the next school year. Teachers will learn how to plan lessons in which they use locally available resources and what they and their students know and enjoy doing. They will learn how to plan lessons to tackle open-ended scientific problems that impart higher thinking skills. They will learn how to deliver these lessons in a fun, engaging, interesting and challenging ways.
Support Phase: This phase is spread across the school year and teachers receive in-school support including demonstration lessons in the classroom, teacher observation and feedback to help them implement what they learned during the trainings. Teachers will also be supported on assessing students’ mastery of scientific concepts and skills, which are transferable and prepare them for success beyond school.
About the Facilitator
Dorje Gurung is an accomplished international science teacher, he has extensive international education and teaching experience spanning around a dozen different countries. A graduate of United World College of the Adriatic (IB Diploma), Italy, Grinnell College (BA), USA, and University of New South Wales (Dip. Ed.), Australia, he has taught in countries as diverse as the US, Malawi, Azerbaijan, Vietnam and Qatar, amongst others.
Teachers Inspire and Empower!
As a teacher, if you enjoy teaching, you will enjoy learning. If you demonstrate an enthusiasm for your job, your students – the very perceptive individuals that they are – will notice. What you do – to teach and to learn – will rub off on them, naturally improving the learning outcomes of your students and thereby raising the quality of science education!
Learn more on Mr. Gurung’s World of Science: https://www.dorjegurung.com/sciblog/
BookBus Nepal
Ekantakuna, Jawalakhel
Contact Person: Pranab Man Singh
Phone Number: 01-5536974
Email Address: bookbusnepal@gmail.com
Website: www.qcbookshop.com
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If you know of science teachers who would benefit from this, ask them to contact BookBus Nepal about enrolling in the program. Enrollment is FREE!!!
What do you think?
Dec. 18, 2017 Update
Realizing knowing the kind of work I have done with my students in the past as well as with teachers in Nepal might help perspective trainees, I have reproduced links to relevant blog posts.
- Education Philosophy. My science education philosophy.
- Intro & Contents: MYP 4-5 Discrepant Events. This post on my Science Blog has links to ALL the MYP Year 4 and 5 (basically grades 9 and 10) enrichment activities — 29 in total — most of which consist of a video of an activity, some really dramatic, which I engaged my students in. The videos of course accompany tasks.
- Intro & Contents: IBDP Chemistry Discrepant Events. Also post on my Science Blog but with links to ALL the IB Diploma (basically grades 11 and 12) enrichment activities — 12 in total — most of which again consist of a video of an activity. As a matter of fact, some of the videos are the same as those for MYP Year 4 and 5 BUT the tasks are a little different: they are considerably more demanding! I will be engaging the participants in some of these very activities.
- Teach, to Learn; Learn, to Teach. Are you a teacher and want to improve the learning outcomes of your students? If you do, you also need to be learning, constantly, by looking for, and trying out, new ways of delivering your lessons. In this blog post, I describe how I approached teaching chemistry in the academic year 2009-10 completely differently and links to all the activities I did that year with my students, some of which could be inspiration for you.
- When Seeking the Right Answer is Wrong. This is a reproduction of an article I wrote for the recently concluded Innovation in Education Fair 2017 information booklet, in which I question the way we approach teaching in Nepal as well as provide details of how we can improve the learning outcomes of students by changing, slightly, how we, teachers, teach science.
- Innovation in Education Fair Pokhara: Air Fire Water. Video of the Science workshop I conducted at the Innovation in Education Fair in Pokhara last September. It’s all about open-ended problems and how to generate questions, a valuable skill that science education in Nepal, in general, does not impart to the students. This will also give you a idea for what the workshops will be like.
- Intro to Science Teacher Training Program…With Some Light Magic. Introducing my Science Teacher Training module to several dozen teachers and administrators on December 1, I performed some light magic. Follow the link to listen…to the 18-minute long magic!!
- Teach For Nepal: Critical Thinking. A reproduction of the presentation I made to Teach For Nepal Science Fellows about why in Nepal we must teach our children to THINK and how we can do that in Science.
- Grade 5 Science at Jana Uddhar: Life Processes. Details of a science lesson I demonstrated to the Fifth Grade science teacher without using a textbook.
- Grade 5 Science at Jana Uddhar: A Field Trip. Teachers in Nepal can vastly improve Science teaching just by changing the way they teach. And for that, they don’t need fancy buildings and the latest resources and gadgets. Just using what’s available at the school and what is accessible locally, science can be brought alive and made relevant to the students, thereby improving the learning outcomes of the students. In this lesson I took advantage of the locality…to teach about the local environment!
- One Small Step for a Science Teacher, One Giant Leap for Science Teaching in Nepal?. Details of the work I did with the 9th grade science teacher also at Jana Uddhar.
- When Your Time, Energy and Effort Pays Off. Volunteering at Jana Uddhar School produced results! One of the science teachers I worked with successfully went on to use her imagination and creativity to create solutions to problems of lack of resources, which, I would like to believe, I was a small inspiration for!
