Anjo Roos

Brainstormer, Concerned citizen, Connector, Designer, Educator/Teacher, World traveler, Writer/Editor

Passing on professional power to educators all over the world

Teacher Empowerment by acting local and connecting global. Teachers all over the world should become aware of the fact that education needs constant attention and innovation but that inclusiveness in education is even more important in the near future. If we want to make this possible we as teachers should make sure that in every country good education is accesible to every member of the community and that qualified and motivated teachers are available. This we can only accomplish when teachers push their governments to support the development of inclusive and excellent education. Why should teachers do this and take up this responsibility ? I feel that a strong and selfconfident profession can help to make governments more aware of the fact that they should facilitate accessible and inclusive education. They can become a strong profession when they start sharing their knowledge on a local and same time global level. My own experience is that we as a professional group will be taken more serious if we show and share our knowledge and concerns. If we want creative and responsible students we need creative and responsible teachers too. An example : As a member of the MeetUp movement ( f.e https://meetup071.wordpress.com/) I saw that organizing small 'TEDx like' meetings on a local scale that are easy accessible help teachers to develop their professional skills and that makes them stronger. Next to organizing local teacher platforms teachers of countries with a good developed education infrastructure can help their fellow teachers in countries where professionalization is badly needed in order to make the profession there more important and in order to let the governments of those countries become aware of the fact that they should facilitate inclusive education. I am doing this right now in Chennai, India where I help teachers develop their professional power. I spoke about this during a national Congres on Education Innovation in the Netherlands last year next to my activities as a member of the MeetUp071 Movement. Passing on professional power is in my opinion the key! By acting local and connecting global the profession will gain importance, and that is the first step to ensure inclusive education for all !

Education design and innovation, Teacher Professionalization

I initially started watching TED talks with my students because we just liked the format and the students wanted to learn to give a talk like that. Because of that I invited a young student who already had given a Ted talk and he gave a few workshops to my students which they really liked. Than I found out that the content of the TED talks , the variety and the easy acces makes it a very good tool to connect students from all over the world. I organized a sort of TEDx salon and asked students from a school in India ( Chennai) to make a top three out of a longlist my students created and the school in Chennai also made a longlist for my students out of which they selected three talks. It was very nice to see that the topics that young students in botch countries like the most have much in common. We organized a Skype session and discussed the content of those talks. This was really cool ! While I was organizing this I already took up the plan to create a TEDxYouth for al the senior high schools in Leiden . I work as a teacher in secondary education and year by year I am getting more surprised by the fantastic creative and hopeful ideas my students have. For instance during the yearly presentation of the Research Papers every time students stand out because of the topics they researched and the solutions they create for the problems of the world ( what to think of a new democratic system to involve the citizens in a better way?) Now I am trying to get a license to organize a platform for young students where they can in a very serious way show their ability to create and share ideas , so I hope to get the license so. The theme we want to address is 'Shaping your own future' .To be continued... we already have a cool location and some passionate speakers

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