The Educational Research and Development Program (ERDP)/AMQF organized on Saturday, June 10, 2017, a workshop in the city of El-Bireh for early childhood teachers, led by ERDP researchers and painter Abdullah Qawariq.
40 teachers from the ERDP Professional Development Project for Early Childhood Teachers took part in the workshop, which was divided into two parts. The first featured a presentation by teachers Dima Sayegh, Hiba Al-Qaq and Haya Al-Araj, overseen by ERDP researcher Vivian Tannous, on their teacher exchange experience with Qattan last February.
The three teachers shared pictures with the other participants and explained the Mantle of the Expert experiment in which they had participated in the first grade of the Woodrow First School and Nursery in the UK. The experiment revolved around the Great Fire of London in 1666, where students played the roles of a royal construction team and assistants to an imagined historian. The students acted out the fire in the classroom, explored its reasons and impact on the city, and wrote a story about it.
Sayegh explained that presenting her experience to her peers was challenging, since she is not used to speaking in public. It was still a very important step to take, she added.
She further noted, “In the past months, which followed the exchange, I started working enthusiastically with my students and applied everything I had learned at Woodrow – for instance, by keeping the classroom space busy at all times and using every minute with the children. I discovered great new talents in my students.”
In the next gathering, teachers Faten Khouri and Muntaha Al-Hajj will expose the Mantle experience they helped implement in the fourth grade of the same school during their week of exchange in the UK.
Artist Abdullah Qawariq oversaw the second part of the workshop, which consisted of an introduction to illustrative drawing, as part of the teachers’ professional development through narration. The teachers’ drawings accompanied personal stories they wrote.
“This workshop aims to couple narrated stories with abstract drawings and to open the professional development program onto experimentation,” said Malek Rimawi, Director of the Languages and Social Sciences Stream at Qattan. “This way, participants learn to express themselves and draw based on their own personal stories,” he added.
On a final note, artist Abdullah Qawariq is planned to conduct a survey of drawings contained in children’s books to develop a better understanding of all visual materials to which children are usually exposed.