Early quality education for every child
Early quality education for every child
Nodira Abdurasulova welcomes the children who come to her group in the preschool education organization #31 in Termez city with a smile. Her alternative group consists of children of different ages and nationalities. The children of her group and she herself get great pleasure from communicating and playing and exploring the world around them together.
This young pedagogist, who has just started working as an educator, tries to continuously enrich her professional knowledge and develop her professional skills. Therefore, she is happy to participate in the training workshop titled "Pedagogical Approaches in Multilingual Alternative Groups".
"This training is very interesting. I received a lot of new information about the pedagogic competencies that are required for the modern teachers, I set new goals and made a work plan to achieve them," says Nodira. "I realized that children’s education should be carried out through games and motivate children to be independent in exploring the world."
In cooperation with UNICEF and Agency for Preschool Education and with the financial support of the European Union, 10 multilingual alternative groups were set up within the public preschool education organizations in the city of Termez, and districts of Termez and Muzrobot in Surkhandarya region. In September this year, children from disadvantaged families, including Afghan children living in these areas, began to attend multilingual alternative groups.
“Every child has a unique background which deserves to be valued and nurtured to achieve both learning and socio-emotional development. The introduction of new approaches to multilingual education provides an opportunity to advance the quality and inclusiveness of pre-school education”, says Alberto Biancoli, Chief of Education, UNICEF Uzbekistan. “International evidence shows how multilingual learning can advance problem solving abilities, memory and abstract thinking and further motivate children’s learning in a more inclusive environment”.
The training program covers practical issues of the peculiarities of creating an educational environment in multilingual groups, aspects of the socio-emotional development of preschool children, speech formation, learning through play and many other areas of child-centered pedagogical activity.
Nodira says that she obtained a lot of new information during the training.
“I have heard the word “empathy” before, but I didn't know how important this is in education. As our trainer Majena Rafalska said, in order for the child to behave freely and be sincere, first of all, I need to understand her/his feelings, what she/he is upset about, and find out the reasons for children’s fears and worries in time. There is a girl in my group named Kavsar. If I leave her unattended for a little while, she immediately starts getting ready to go home. I couldn't understand the reason for this. I imagined myself in her place and realized that Kavsar had difficulties in adapting to new conditions in the group because she was attending a preschool educational organization for the first time, and it was necessary to strengthen the creation of emotional comfort for her. Now I and her mother are working on this. Children's parents are my best partners."
Other participants of the training, like Nodira, are also glad that they have gained useful knowledge about strategies instrumental in pedagogy, up-to-date approaches to work with children of different ages and from different language background, and skills that can be used in their practice.
"I will definitely share what I learned here with my colleagues," says Nodira. "Such trainings are very useful for us to work better with children, because every child deserves special attention and quality education."
