Summer Learning at Teacher Training Center
Every year, the Studer Trust Teacher Training Center (TTC) hosts a variety of short specialty workshops for its alumni during summer vacation, which occurs March-May in Myanmar. During that time, teachers have the opportunity to select from a menu of 5-6 workshops and select the one that they feel best meets the needs of their school, students, and their goals for their own professional development. Over the course of a year, the TTC staff surveys our active alumni to determine what topics they are most interested in learning about during the upcoming summer break and then partners with a variety of local individuals and organizations to provide teachers with the most effective and relevant trainings as possible. This year, TTC offered workshops on the following topics: First Aid, Consumerism, Arts and Crafts, LGBT Issues, Non-Violent Communication, and Special Education.
First, TTC partnered with the Myanmar Red Cross Societyto provide our teachers with the basic first aid skills necessary to respond to simple and more complex emergency issues until students can be taken to a hospital or more experienced health professionals arrive. 100%of teachers who attended the program passedthe required exam to become certified in basic first aid.
Participants also learned how to more productively and compassionately communicate with others by attending our Non-Violent Communication (NVC) workshop. Based on the work by Marshall Rosenberg, teachers learned how to listen for the innate human needs expressed by their own and others’ feelings and concerns and communicate these in more empathetic and compassionate terms in order to resolve conflicts they are experiencing with others. One teacher stated, “I really enjoyed learning about the steps in NVC: Observation, Feeling, Need and Request. Now, I can apply in these strategies in real life situations”. For more information about NVC, please visit the following website: https://www.cnvc.org.
Furthermore, TTC partnered with a local non-profit organization, Colors Rainbow, to help our alumni become more aware of challenges LBGT students may face in their classroom as well as providing them with the knowledge, awareness, and skills necessary to address these issues in a positive and productive way. One teacher noted, “I have become more aware of LGBT issues”, explaining, “I know how to accept and better communicate with my community if there is a LGBT child”.
Overall, teachers found all of the workshops they attended helpful, and many recommended offering the same topics for other teachers to attend next year. This year, overall 154participants attended and were able to benefit from the workshops offered, none of which would have been possible without the generous support of our donor, the Wai Yin Association, as well as the talented individuals and organizations that supported our program by facilitating the workshops. TTC continues to be grateful and extremely appreciative of all their support.
