Western Gazette series, UK
March 18, 2010
Armenian pupils’ desire to learn impresses UK teachers
A Teacher has spoken of her eye-opening trip to observe teaching
techniques in the republic of Armenia.
Year five teacher at Mere Primary School, Deborah Shannon, braved
temperatures of -10C last month when she visited eight primary schools
during a week in the former Soviet republic as part of the
International Teacher Programme.
Now back in Mere, Mrs Shannon, 31, has been telling her pupils about
the differences and similarities between Armenian and English schools.
She said: "I went with eight other teachers from Wiltshire as part of
a programme run by the British Council, the nation’s international
cultural relations body, during the February half term.
"The schools in the capital, Yerevan, gave us an amazing welcome and
each one of them performed a play entirely in English.
"We were very impressed with the way the teachers and pupils were able
to stretch their resources so far to get the maximum value out of
them. It did make me realise that back at home we sometimes lose focus
on the actual act of learning because we have so many materials to
use.
"The country has had a very difficult history and struggled over the
years to maintain independence as it is geographically encircled by
Georgia, Iran, Turkey and Azerbaijan, but the people are fiercely
patriotic."
Mrs Shannon has taught at Mere for three years and previously worked
as an English teacher in Indonesia, Oman and Eritrea. She added: "I’m
a pretty experienced traveller, as were many of the teachers on the
trip, but we agreed that we had never been anywhere quite like
Armenia. They have a very distinct culture and sense of identity, but
they are also influenced a lot by their neighbours.
"Under Soviet rule, Armenian education was very formalised and rigid,
with children sitting in rows for every lesson and not encouraged to
be creative. The country’s economy was devastated in 1988 by an
earthquake and it has still not fully recovered, so the people there
are quite poor. But they’ve made good progress despite this and now
they’re doing things in much the same way that we are, with more
emphasis on group work and encouraging creativity. The teachers were
incredibly dedicated and we hope that we can establish strong links
with some of the schools so that they can come to visit us in Mere one
day to see for themselves how we do things over here.
"One thing that struck me was that the Armenian children are
absolutely desperate to learn. It is a contrast to back at home where
it can be difficult to hold the children’s attention at times because
they have so many distractions in their lives with television and
computer games, although my current class is excellent."
Mrs Shannon said she took her pupils to London’s Natural History
Museum recently and when they returned to school, the head teacher had
received two emails from passengers on the train praising the
children’s behaviour.