By Lev Horodyskyj | Founder
Greeting all,
I hope the new year finds you well. We are happy to report the completion of our first Greenworks: Ukraine experience. Greenworks is a program that we pioneered with our Indonesian colleagues that we are adapting to achieve our objectives in Ukraine while we await for conditions to become more conducive to on-location work.
In October and November, a cohort of Ukrainian Earth science teachers and students studying to teach Earth science in Ukraine worked with a cohort of Brazilian students to complete a 6-week course on experiential learning through role-playing and cross-cultural communication. This type of learning is called "active learning" as it engages students in activities that help them internalize important concepts. This is compared to "passive learning", where students sit and listen to lecture and are expected to internalize concepts without ever engaging with them or practicing them. Passive learning is very common in many science classrooms around the world. A critical part of modernizing science classrooms is to teach teachers how to teach using modern approaches.
Our Ukrainian learning cohort had their first hands-on experience with active learning through our Greenworks curriculum. For six-weeks, they role-played as national leaders making decisions that required a working knowledge of Earth science (important for determining trade routes, climate change action, and responses to natural disasters). Afterwards, we had a breakdown of how the experience was constructed and the components that are necessary for building active learning classrooms. Response was positive, with a desire to formalize the teacher-training component.
We're continuing to work on Agavi to meet the needs of our science teachers. We'll have more updates on that later in the year. In the meantime, we are also incorporating the lessons and feedback from our recent Greenworks experience to develop a strong teacher-training curriculum that we will test again later in the spring.
As always, thank you for your support and interest in our work.
With gratitude,
Lev
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By Lev Horodyskyj | Founder
By Lev Horodyskyj | Founder
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