TC's December 2022 Newsletter

Hello there!

It’s been a minute and we sincerely apologise for the long silence. Welcome to our end of year newsletter. Receive Christmas greetings from Teach Connect and its partners. 2022 came with challenges for us and we have sailed through those moments gracefully, picking up pending projects and launching new exciting ones. We hope you have been thriving and we hope this holiday is filled with love and warmth from your families and friends. As we go over our milestones and aspirations for the coming year, we have come up with a run down of where we currently are and what we look forward to experiencing with you come 2023. The following activities marked our 2022 calendar:

?The Rethink Education Conference (REC) took place on the 16th of July 2022 at the S.T Muna Foundation in Yaounde with this year’s theme “Enabling Student Success”. An interesting keynote address by the director of the S.T Muna Foundation left us with some thought-provoking hints about our current education system and how it should be revamped to prepare students for the future (here is the address in case you missed it). As usual, the aim of the event is to bring education stakeholders together with a common objective of rethinking the relevance of our current educational practices and approaches geared at enabling and supporting student success in a 21st-century era. This year’s conference was focused on exploring how educational institutions are enriching student success through all aspects of the school’s core activities of teaching and learning. During the event, which was a combination of guest speakers, break-out sessions and workshops, the discussion throughout the day was directed at developing a comprehensive understanding of how to improve education in Cameroon. In summary, the event ended with a shared understanding of how schools can enable students' success.

The TC Young Professional Challenge saw new winners this year. The children's challenge is drawn from the TC EXCEL Teaching Model with the theme, “Water Crisis and Management” saw some new players and winners this year . It encouraged children from 6 to 16 years, to use their creativity and problem-solving skills to develop and present ideas on water crisis and management in a specific context. The challenge was launched on the 1st of July and ended on the 31st of July 2022, with 6 winners, (three winners from each category) who benefited from school stationeries and cash prizes. (Take a look down memory lane on our Facebook page

The TC public library was Launched on 29 October 2022 with the theme “Education-Learning-Research”. The main objective of the library is to promote access to information, encourage reading, and ongoing research activities being undertaken by educators, students, researchers and entrepreneurs. The library is accessible through subscription bundles and is open from Mondays - Fridays (9:00 am to 5:00 pm) and Saturdays from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm. You can reach us via email [email protected] for more information.

Ignite: The theme for this year’s Ignite event “Emerging from darkness” reflects pretty much most of what our lives have been like over the last 24 months, which inspired the choice for Bamenda to host the 6th edition given the dark history it carries since 2016. Bamenda was ideal for this year’s event as there is a need to bring back the hope that once lived in a peaceful city before the crisis. The event took place on the 10 December and was again another great success with inspiring stories from dynamic guest speakers who shared their own journeys and struggles in walking out of the darkness (see pictures on Facebook ).

Besides these events and others which were done in partnership with other organizations such as Irebuild Africa and Brilliant Redemption, we also relaunched some of our programmes, of which our flagship Teach2Connect Volunteering programme was among.

Programmes

Teach 2 Connect Volunteer programme: This is one of our learning support service programme that is open to youths who have a passion for teaching and coaching with a desire to make a difference in their communities. The programme is meant to assist deploy talented young people into community homes who can facilitate learning and skills development. The aim is for these volunteers to support learning endeavours and work with children, young people and adults to acquire and build relevant professional skills and technical knowledge in Business, Design, Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics. This programme was relaunched and officially begins once we resume on Jan 11, 2023. Read more about the programme here (https://www.teachconnect.org/teach-connect-volunteer) and how you can get involved, together we can make a difference.

Other programmes that will be launched in January

• English Cafe: This is a hybrid English course with both online and onsite sessions for individuals seeking to improve their English language skills and confidence in communicating in English, or write international language proficiency exams like IELTS and TOEFL.
• The Effective School Index: We launched the Effective school index Project in March and did the first baseline study with great success. We are currently looking forward to the rest of the project as it unfolds. Read more about the Index here
• Leadup: As a capacity development strand from the School Effective Index, the LeadUp project also kicked off with the aim of enabling school leaders to develop a comprehensive understanding of their leadership practices, with an intention to build agency to effectively address leadership and management issues in ensuring school quality, effectiveness and performance Similarly, the EXCEL Teacher training programme made a parallel commitment to producing ‘EXCELLENT’ teachers, who are equipped to inspire 21st-century learning competencies.
• Our Doctorate Research Fellowship programme is back! Because we know doing the Doctorate degree is often a lonely journey, which could also be a stressful one, we are pleased to announce that the research community resumes its calendar of activity for 2023 in February with its first event on the Building Blocks of a Successful Doctoral Thesis. Regardless of where you are with your Doctorate journey, this is not an opportunity to miss. Make sure you join the Research community if you are passionate about research and stay informed about any research-related information and resources.?

?A few Christmas tips for you

As the year slowly comes to an end, here are some tips we believe can help you make the most of this festive period:

• Make peace with your past to avoid it interfering with your present (Appreciate the now and here!)
• As you pray for a fruitful 2023, do the groundwork that sets you up for what you pray for (invest in your health, education and wealth-creation habits)
• Your happiness is strictly your responsibility. Constantly giving into everybody’s opinion about you only makes you a people pleaser and this set of people are miserable.
• This is a season of merrymaking, use this opportunity to create memories with families and friends.

Looking ahead...

?Planning for the 2023 Rethinking education conference: is ongoing, if you are passionate about the future of education, the potential of technology, curriculum design, teaching and learning or policy and research in education, not leaving out innovation and innovative practices in education, you want to keep an eye on our website for updates on the 3rd edition of the Rethinking Education Conference scheduled for July 2023

?Our New Course is here- EXCEL Teachers Training Programme

We have put together a power collection of our teaching strategies and approach (EXCEL Framework) with resources to support both experienced and aspiring teachers adopt 21st-century teaching methodologies (inquiry-based, project-based learning, technology-enhanced learning and data-driven learning) who are interested in improving their expertise in delivering impactful lessons. Interested? kindly click the link below:

EXCEL Teacher Training Course

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