[imagesource: Valenture]

Before COVID-19, teachers had the important job of shaping minds and inspiring young people to reach their full potential.

So many teachers have gone above and beyond this during the pandemic that this year’s World Teachers’ Day has taken on new meaning.

While schools were closed, educating moved online, bringing with it new challenges at pre-primary, primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. 

Unlearning traditional teaching methods was, perhaps, the trickiest part of all. Finding a way to keep students engaged so that their education wasn’t compromised involved unimaginable feats of creativity.

Valenture Institute, a world-class global online high school, already had a jump on things, giving them a unique perspective on teaching remotely.

Here’s Chivimbiso Gava, Valenture’s Head of Learning Design.

“With online education it’s very specific around the design, making sure that there’s efficacy of the courses that we’re designing and that students are actually learning and internalising information on the online platform.”

Today, October 5, 2020, is World Teachers’ Day, which has been celebrated every year since 1994. The day commemorates the anniversary of the adoption of the 1966 International Labour Organisation (ILO) and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers.

This internationally celebrated day highlights both the progress that’s been made, as well as the remaining challenges faced by a community that spans continents.

“It is no exaggeration to say that the world is at a crossroads and, now more than ever, we must work with teachers to protect the right to education and guide it into the unfolding landscape brought about by the pandemic,” says UNESCO.

A shining example of what’s possible in the field of online teaching, Valenture’s pedagogy is an action-oriented, transformative approach that allows students to tackle major development challenges for humanity in SDG Labs by using the framework of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as set out by the United Nations.

“Our education system is part of a larger social system that is deeply unequal; the provision of quality education is inherently a social justice issue. As much as digital technologies can provide fun learning environments and interactive course content, we must be careful not to perpetuate these existing inequalities,” says Cris Roberston, Sustainability Learning Designer at Valenture Institute.

To really see the effect of quality and inspiring teaching online, let’s hand over to some of the students at Valenture:

Together with teachers, we all have a responsibility to reimagine the future of education.

In this time of crisis and beyond, we need to collaborate to find new models and approaches, thereby securing a more equal and just society that is both sustainable and allows for scalability, ensuring that no student is left behind.