At least two hundred and sixty (260) Junior Secondary School teachers in Katsina State have undergone three days of intensive training on new teaching methods and other techniques.
The training put together by the Adolescent Girls’ Initiative For Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) Project was intended to equip the teachers with certain new teaching skills, methods, strategies, and techniques aimed at making teaching and learning easier and more comfortable.
The facilitator of the training and lecturer with Isah Kaita College of Education, Hauwa Maijidda Mohammed told reporters on Monday that the training was intended to improve the teachers’ teaching skills.
She explained that the essence was just to have a paradigm shift from conventional teacher-centered learning approaches to learner-centered learning methods.
“This program is going on simultaneously across the whole state. We have 260 teachers and quality assurance officers across six centers, and this is Katsina Centre 1. It’s the component of teacher training component.
“We have 10 modules in the manual that cover different aspects of what the teacher should be able to do in the classroom.
“If you notice inside the training hall, the teachers are grouped instead of the usual face me I face you that we do in the classrooms. This helps all participants to take part in whatever activity or task given by the teacher.
“So, rather than telling them to go and do it, we are now teaching them how to do it. This is because the world is changing.
“At the end of the programme, the teachers should be equipped with new methodologies, new skills, and even leadership roles. We are even teaching them how to have good school records. That’s, record keeping as well as language and communication,” she noted.
Two of participants at the event – Mabaruka Dalhat and Ibrahim Sani – said they have really learnt a lot of teaching techniques, especially in preparing lesson plans and behavioral objectives.
“They taught us how to use action verbs. Words such as define, clarify, state. We should be using words that are not simple. They also taught us that, in a lesson plan, previous knowledge is not needed nowadays however interim behaviors are now used.
“I understand that slow learners are more difficult to learn or be taught than fast learners. I have learnt a lot and I will extend what I learnt here to other teachers that were not opportune to be here,” Mabaruka Dalhat.
And for Ibrahim Sani, “I have learnt different things like advanced teaching methods and use of instructional materials in teaching. This knowledge we learned will impact positively on the students”.
