Top nomination for the Global Teacher Prize is an Educator’s Dream
- Belinda Daniels | April 03, 2016
Now that I have recovered from a phenomenal educative experience empowered by creative ideas, inspirational learning and stories that moved me to tears daily I want to share with you what Being nominated as a Top 50 Finalist felt like. It was incredible! Being given an invite to go to Dubai, United Arab Emirates was yet another “butterfly” stomach turning experience that I will never forget and it could be because I am of Indigenous heritage, nēhiyaw in fact, a female and the only Canadian 2016 finalist. This was remarkable on all fronts despite Canada’s colonial landscape, especially when it comes to education.
It was a surreal experience to attend the Varkey Teacher Ambassadors Leadership Summit and the Global Education and Skills Forum, and let’s not forget to witness the One Million Dollar Global Teacher Prize Winner, which went to Hanan Al Hroub of Palestine at The Palm Atlantis, in Dubai. The main message of this experience was RESPECT and raising the stature of the teaching profession in all parts of the world. Mr. Sonny Varkey went beyond making teachers feel special and valued, which I will share later.
I got to meet, sit and work with Hanan during our two-day Varkey Teacher Summit. Her courage was astounding, her story amazed me and what she does for her students in her country makes me proud and deeply humbled to be an educator along side her (Hanan), along with so many great others from around the world, including the top ten finalists. Our job when initially meeting one another was to “press the flesh” and get to know each other. We were to create a global movement in education that included our best practices and contribute our best ideas. Vikas Pota, CEO of the Varkey Foundation wanted to capture “in a bottle all our talent combined.” It was also about coming to the realization that people are not born smart, it is the experiences that makes one smart and taking advantage of every opportunity. This was a common teacher message said to our students globally, however, here was my opportunity to learn and grow.
The two-day leadership summit was an extraordinary event focusing on teacher empowerment and changing the education system. Our speakers included: Professor Fernando Reimers of Harvard University, Professor Connie Chung of Harvard Graduate School of Education, Ross Hall who is the Director of Education in Ashoka, UK, and of course Vikas Pota who is the CEO and Director of the Varkey Foundation, last but not least David Gershon who is the CEO of the Empowerment Institute. The two days were long, leaving the hotel at 7:00 a.m. and being back at the hotel around 10:00 pm was a learning marathon without our accustomed coffee breaks in Saskatchewan!
For the first two days, some of our time was focused on ‘Building Teacher Capacity’ which required (us) to break into working groups and come up with best practices and solutions in the areas of: Supporting school and community relations, Supporting teacher reflection on practice, continuous professional development and teacher collaboration in schools, Supporting creativity in schools, supporting global citizenship, Supporting numeracy and quantitative reasoning, Supporting Science and Supporting effective literacy instruction. The other parts of our day included strategies in ‘Changing the System,’ conversations were about changing the school system to a bottom up approach, being creative and innovative and asking questions like what structures need to be changed? How can we make our system human centered (this reminded me of our learning systems back home on the issue of Indigenization). We were also learning how to fix broken systems that don’t know how to grow. For me, being a part of this learning, listening and participating was an educator’s dream come true, something I believe I manifested sometime ago. And here I was, a part of a global change in education and now a Varkey Teacher Ambassador with the opportunity to attend annually in the future.
While taking part in the global education forum I recorded mini videos my experience along with interviewing many of the other top educators using the Onestory app https://www.onestory.com/interviews/the-global-educator-s-experience-in-dubai
I asked questions like: ‘What do you think of this amazing experience? Along with ‘what was their greatest teaching practice?’ I had this in mind prior to the trip because I wanted to share with fellow educators back home in Canada. (The teacher in me is always a step a head of what are going to be the learning outcomes of anything educative that I do, as this was one of those experiences I wanted to share).
While our stay in Dubai, teachers had the option of taking part in a home-stay program to help eliminate travel costs or stay in a host hotel. The costs were comparable to here in Saskatchewan. The Global Education and Skills Forum took Place at the Palm Atlantis. All the food/meals, beverages, travelling were free. Everyone received a backpack with all the essential information including our ticket to the Global Teacher Prize.
At the Global Education and Skills Forum various talks, debates, activities took place in and out of the hotel. The temperature was about 30 plus, with some clouds, which helped deflected the heat, as being from Saskatoon I was not used to this extreme heat. Some of the sessions I took part in included: Meet the top ten finalists of the Global Teacher Prize, Meet the Mentor – Mr. Sonny Varkey, Ed Talks which included: Combating extremism in inner city schools in Birmingham: Case Study, Flip the system: Changing the education from the Ground up with Jelmer Evers, Smart City Revolution with Fahd Al Rasheed, CEO KAEC, Saudi Arabia, How to Turn Around a Failing School with Prof Alex Hill, Silencing the gun: Fighting Radicalisation in Africa’s biggest Slum with Kennedy Odede of Kenya, and Bring an education system back to life after Ebola with George Werner, Minister of Education , Liberia, just to name a few. During the Meet the Mentor session with Mr. Sonny Varkey, I got to ask him “What was his inspiration and how did he practice it?” His response was that he enjoying praying daily and his practice was ‘giving’ which really resonated with me, as those are some of core values that I too practice. This was a delighted experience, again, one that I will never forget.
I want to mention that this event has been held annually since 2013, the Varkey Foundation brings together leaders and practitioners from the public, private and social sectors to address the challenges of education, employment and equity. This Forum was in partnership with the Association for the Development of Education in Africa, African Union, Ashoka, the Asia Society, a World at school, Dubai Cares, Education International, GEMS education, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Inter-American Development Bank, Knowledge and Human Development Authority, UNESCO, and Youth Advocacy Group of the UN Global Education First Initiative.
Some of the views and practices of teaching in other countries I was able to ask or converse about when meeting others like Aggeliki Pappa from Greece, her work in Dyslexia was not supported by her ministry. Teachers in parts of Africa, specifically Kenya had difficulties collecting their salaries or cashing a monthly cheque. In the country of Japan, according to Kazuya Takahshi, he mentions that people expect too many things from teachers and a lot go crazy and quit their job. In the country of China, teachers are considered having equal status as medical doctors. It was surprising to understand that not all teachers had unions. Not all teachers had access to the Internet or in the most extreme cases teachers had to be fully aware of the violence that could or had occurred in their schools. In other places like Canada, the United States and England schools were innovative but not yet flourishing was the sense I understood. The Varkey Foundation had set out world statistics when it came to education and displayed their findings through out the Two Day Leadership Summit and the Global Education and Skills Forum. The outcomes were not stellar when it came to education.
However, wherever teachers came from, countries around the globe are facing huge difficulties in poverty, war, disease, economic crisis, and inequality. It is up to teachers every where to some how meet these overwhelming difficulties and conflicts and make learning worthwhile, safe, and fun which in this case I got to see and hear! Mr. Sonny Varkey and his team went all OUT! At then end of the whole experience, I got to walk the red carpet! It felt like being at the ‘Oscars’ for the best performing teachers. Mathew Mcconaughey and Selma Hayek were some the celebrities that celebrated with this amazing teachers, along with his Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.
I want to express a great big kinanaskomitinawaw- thank you to the Board of the Dr. Sterling McDowall for believing in me, OneStory for your continued support in the work that I do with student learning and the Varkey Foundation. For more information about the Varkey Foundation check out the link: http://www.globalteacherprize.org/varkey-foundation.