Hello, my name is Mohamed Oummih, and I’m the director of English for Africa. Today, I’m here to talk to you about EFA’s Webinar Initiative for Teacher Training, or EFA-WITT.
The EFA-WITT project was born out of an observation and a desire.
The observation was that, in the minds of many teachers, there is a gulf between teachers and teacher trainers, as if teachers aren’t allowed to teach other teachers, and had to limit themselves to teaching students, unless they had some specialized training. Of course, this is rubbish—once you’ve learned how to teach, the same planning and class management methods apply regardless of whom you are teaching: awareness of your learners’ needs, personalization, and careful scaffolding when planning, and a warm attitude, solid instructions, varied feedback, and lots of praise when teaching. A teacher can teach anything to anyone, and that’s a fact.
The desire was to empower teachers to get into the driver’s seat of their own professional development. Teachers can and should decide what they learn, who they learn from, and how they learn it.
To further incentivize teachers, and to give them more confidence in pursuing their professional development goals, we have decided to give them support in preparing their webinars. Once you’ve chosen a subject, I will personally meet with the teacher to help them decide on the learning objectives for the webinar and plan out what it will look like. Once the session is planned out, I will meet with you again to give you feedback on your plan—that’s up to two free hours of free training to be a teacher trainer, plus an online venue to stretch your wings and explore your own potential as a teacher trainer.
And finally, we are now providing certificates to teachers who run the webinars, as well as certificates of attendance. So if you haven’t signed up to be part of the EFA-WITT project, now is the time to do so. If you’ve already signed up, get in touch immediately to reserve a date for your webinar, either on your own or as a team.
EFA is here for you, for teachers, worldwide. We’re eager to make a difference, and that difference is you. See you soon! For more information on EFA-WITT, read more here
We need more of the webinar on the Cambridge system of education.