Training 1500 Teachers |Empowering 5000 Girls/Boys

When Miss Goma, a maths teacher in Grade IV, enters the classroom with her pink school kurta and smiling face, students greet her with enthusiasm and awe as they know it’s time for an interesting and fun lesson.

“Children what do you know about angles? Can you show me an angle in or around the classroom?” she asks and students eagerly raise their hands.

Miss Goma knows from the Awareness Level Training conducted by PHASE Nepal that it is crucial to build curiosity in the classroom in order to open up the children’s minds for learning. As the class goes on, I can see students making acute, obtuse and right angles with their elbows; students gather in groups to discuss and solve a particular question they were asked, before doing sums in their notebooks.

This is an observation made by Bikash, a Master Trainer of PHASE Nepal, who has been conducting training in remote schools in Nepal. Goma teaches at Devi Secondary School, one of the 16 schools in Thumpakhar that benefited from the Teacher Training programmes that were run by PHASE Nepal. Thumpakhar is situated in the Sindhupalchowk district – about 4 hours drive from Kathmandu, Nepal's capital.

The PHASE Nepal Education Team carried out a four day long Subject Specific Training programme for 52 primary level teachers in Thumpakhar, Thulopakhar and Petku after the success of the Best Teaching Practices and Mentorship training in the area. During the training, the teachers were taught and practised several interactive activities for teaching mathematics and English.

After attending the Subject Specific Training on maths by PHASE Nepal, Miss Goma told the trainers: “The Best Teaching Practices training transformed my way of teaching and your follow up training on maths gave me several brilliant ideas of employing best teaching practices in the classroom in more effective ways. I especially like the use of algebra tiles to consolidate the abstract algebraic concept, like negative addition and subtraction. Thank you to PHASE Nepal for making all these good things possible.”

Shyam Thapa, the Resource Person of Thumpakhar, who personally took part in all the training and follow-up events by PHASE Nepal on behalf of the District Education Office of Sindhupalchowk, said:“I feel great about working with PHASE Nepal. I have personally attended every session of your trainings – Awareness Level Training, Training of Teachers, and now the Subject Specific Training on Math and Science. As an Resource Person, I have seen classes taught by the teachers and I am amazed by how effectively the teachers are incorporating new ideas in their classroom.”

In addition to offering teacher development courses, Nepal Teacher Training Innovations (NTTI) runs a Mentor Program to provide NTTI-trained teachers with the on-going support they need to move from an awareness of best teaching practices to being able to implement best teaching practice methodology with competence and confidence.

Khika Bahaur Bhandari is one of NTTI’s exceptional Mentor Teachers. We met with him at his school in Thumpikar Village Development Community (VDC) to discuss his experience as a Mentor Teacher.

Mr. Bhandari has been teaching all subjects at the primary level and Nepali language at the secondary level for the past seven years. He says his greatest pleasure in the world is interacting with his students. He was selected to become a Mentor Teacher because he is one of the most talented teachers in Thumpikhar VDC.

“The best thing about the NTTI Mentor Program, Mr. Bhandari told us, is that, teachers know they will be observed, so they feel pressure to do a good job.” “Some teachers only want to make an effort when they know they will be observed but once students know that their teacher is capable of teaching them in an engaging way, they get upset when their teacher tries to return to the traditional lecture method. So, to save face with their students, even the teachers who are not so committed keep making lesson plans and keep using the NTTI methodology“.

When asked how being a Mentor Teacher has impacted his own teaching, Mr. Bhandari told us:

Because I am a Mentor Teacher, I feel my class has to be a model all the time, so I spend a lot of time planning. Since the NTTI Training and then becoming a Mentor Teacher, my teaching is very different because I do a lot of collaborative work and the children have more of a voice. I talk less and encourage the children to talk more. Before being selected as a Mentor Teacher, I only thought of my own class while now I care about all the teachers and the entire school.

NTTI has trained more than 75 Mentor Teachers from 6 VDCs ( Thumpikhar, Tulipikhar, Hagam, Filpinkot, and Rayale) in3 districts (Sindupolchowk, Kavre and Gorkha) . Mentor Teachers observe teachers on their caseloads multiple times a year and send reports back to NTTI Master Trainers. Teachers report that being observed and getting feedback from their Mentor Teachers keeps them motivated and principals are pleased that, because they do not want to look bad with their students in comparison to their colleagues, teachers are working much harder to create engaging lessons. NTTI is the only teacher program in Nepal that utilizes Mentor Teachers and Mr. Bhandari thinks this makes our program “revolutionary”.