Author Archives: Teachers' Resource Centre

Samira Rahimtoola attended a full day CSO Leaders’ Roundtable on ‘Branding for Sustainability’ organized by the NGORC on December 29, 2008, for various Pakistani NGOs. The session was aimed at enhancing the Knowledge of CSO leaders about branding concepts, tools and techniques and its applicability to Civil Society Organizations.
Key Learning: An organization’s identity is determined by how it delivers and communicates value to its key stakeholders. Consistent delivery and constant communication creates a very powerful asset for the organization, which is ‘a brand people reckon and identify with’. The same is true for CSOs’ in terms of the shared emotional perception stakeholders have in connection with the services offered by the CSO, thus creating a ‘nonprofit brand’. Branding when carried out effectively, eventually leads to long-term sustainability, as people are able and willing to relate with the social cause of the CSO and invest their time and money for the same.

TRC participated in the 4th Karachi International Book fair that was held from 26th – 30th December 2008, at the Karachi Expo Centre. The fair was well organised under the auspices of the Pakistan Publishers and Booksellers Association in collaboration with the National Book Foundation. The Fair aimed to promote a reading habit amongst children and adults, and to reclaim the book culture which we are gradually losing.
Our participation received a significant response; visitors to our stall were interested in information about TRC’s objectives and our services.
Many teachers, students and people from different walks of life showed interest in our publications. Some of them stopped to tell us how much they appreciated our bi-annual educational resource “Ilm o Amal.” Complimentary copies were given to them. Several people also inquired about our membership.Kifayat Academy (Publishers) who were participating in the Fair, offered us a gratis stall to help raise awareness about our work. Thank you Rehan for your thoughtfulness.

The Annual General Body Meeting for the year July 2007 to June 2008, was held on Thursday, 18th December, 2008 at TRC. It was attended by members of the TRC Board and representatives from member schools. It provided members an opportunity to become aware of TRC’s achievements for the year; approve the audited accounts and learn about future plans. Some of the members present expressed their appreciation and shared their experiences about how they had benefitted from TRC’s professional development programmes, school evaluation and film club discussions.

We have always sought to provide our members with quality services through our workshops, publications and teaching-learning resources. What our members have to say about our services is very important to us and we generally ask them for their reactions and comments via our evaluation forms. This year, however, we decided it was high time we made personal visits again. So, over the last two months, November and December 2008, our team has been out and around Karachi visiting member schools.
Through informal conversations with school heads and coordinators, we have received valuable feedback about our workshops, our library, our publications, and film club. For the most part, members are happy with the breadth of topics covered by our workshop programme and find all our resources useful. They really appreciated the face to face visits as much as we did.

Some concerns were expressed regarding the distance of our new location. This has a direct impact on the cost of getting teachers to the venue, be it for workshops or to use our library. We appreciate the honesty with which member schools have responded to our visits, which will continue in January and February 2009. Thank you schools! Your feedback will be at the forefront when we sit down to plan for next year.

On 13 November 2008, we kicked off our Ed Links programme activities with a set of focus group discussions in Jamshoro, with students of Classes VI-VIII. These discussions are part of the process for the development of math and science learning material. The main purpose of talking with students was to understand their existing interests, issues and experiences in studying math and science in schools. It also helped in gauging their access to, and perceptions about, the use of technology for learning in and outside of school, on their own or with their peers and teachers.
Not surprisingly, of the 48 students in Jamshoro, not more than 12 had ever seen or touched a computer. The majority of these 12 were male students who were enrolled in a computer course after school or in very rare cases, had a computer at home. Some of the responses reflected very interesting perceptions about teaching and learning. For instance, almost 90% of the students said that they had not learnt anything of maths, science or technology on their own and asserted that unless there is a teacher, no learning can take place. After a few more probing questions, the students shared how they had figured out how to use mobile phones for text messaging and playing games. Examples of learning from TV channels, cricket, video games and finally each other were then shared.
During our discussions with teachers, they complained that there were too many units and exercises in the math and science textbooks, which made it hard for them to cover the syllabus. Three of the six teachers had recently attended math workshops but confessed that they had not applied anything in the classroom because of the large number of students and immense workload.We found the interaction very useful for determining the nature of the digital learning materials we will be developing. A few more focus group discussion are scheduled with students and teachers in Balochistan and in Karachi.

Standards and Early Childhood Education seem to have caught the fancy of many people in the education sector. One such exercise on standards is led by UNICEF and the Project Wing, Ministry of Education Government of Pakistan, and is part of a global initiative known as, “Early Learning and Development Standards”. Under this initiative, several countries in various regions have worked/are working to identify and establish early learning and development standards; these standards cover a wide range of children’s experiences from learning in the classroom to parenting at home.

The process started in the SAARC countries in September 2008, with a workshop in Nepal, organised by the UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia. If you are interested, scroll down and read the news on ELDS Writing and Validation Workshop in Kathmandu.
From 11-12 November 2008, TRC, represented by Amima Sayeed, participated in an orientation workshop on ELDS in Islamabad. As Pakistan has hopped on to the ELDS caravan of countries and plans to focus on teaching and learning only, we at TRC feel that it is essential that instead of starting from scratch the ELDS builds on all the good work already undertaken for Early Childhood Education in Pakistan, and bridges some of the gaps in the current draft document.