KHACHATUR ABOVYAN ARMENIAN STATE PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY

Through cooperation between the Armenian State Pedagogical University (ASPU) and Teach For Armenia Educational Foundation, future pedagogues recently paid a visit to Zangakatun village.

The graduating students of the “Primary Pedagogy and Methodology” Division were accompanied by Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Primary Education Armine Mikayelyan and Career Development Coordinators at Teach For Armenia.

The school in Zangakatun is part of Teach For Armenia's “Generation” program, which is an innovative transformation program for schools with the main purpose of transforming education by arming pupils with skills in orientating in a rapidly changing world of innovations. The program is carried out through the promotion of emotional development and project-based learning.

The aim of the visit of the future pedagogues was to discover the activities of Teach For Armenia anew, become familiar with the innovations applied in practice, the work that is done with children individually, as well as the student-centered environment that every teacher/leader creates.

During the visit, the students were introduced to the processes ensuring the active involvement of pupils in schools, there were classroom observations in four classrooms of an elementary school, and the students learned about the community programs of pupils in different grades, i.e. “Zangak” magazine, “Amanej”, etc.

Through a question-and-answer session, the students were provided with more details about the teachers’ leadership program and were more interested in the “Myerenik” game of Teach For Armenia which the pupils hosted. There was a closing period for the representatives of the ASPU, as well as the teachers and pupils — they danced the Armenian traditional “Kochari” dance, and later, they paid a visit to the house-museum of Armenian poet Paruyr Sevak.