International Educator Capacity-building: Educator and Leadership Institutes expand

The Educator and Leadership Institute framework continues to progress in various stages and iterations. When we launched ELI in Haiti, we believed that if it could succeed there, with the various geographic, political, and economic challenges of a fragile context, it could succeed elsewhere.

1. Haiti. The Educator and Leadership Institute is now "maturing" as we enter year three of our five year commitment to providing teacher and principal training in northern Haiti. We are anticipating 500-600 teachers in attendance with 40-50 Canadian educators involved as "lead learners". This is a critical year as we support the 20 Haitian educators who were identified last year to be future leaders of the institute. They will be working with Canadian educators over the next two years and gradually take on increased leadership and teaching responsibilities. This is our model of sustainability and transformative change.

2. Egypt. We are into the second year of a very different model of the Educator and Leadership Institute in Egypt. Not only is the context different, but the teachers involved are at a different stage of their professional learning. In February, four Canadian educators will be working with teachers in Cairo in areas of technology integration, critical literacy, and early learning. This builds on the work I did last year when I was there in February. I will return in May to complete the work I have started in November, 2017 on peer coaching. The model of peer coaching is a way to support the capacity of educators to be leaders themselves within the school and to support the professional learning of their peers. It is a different way to be sustainable but equally effective.

3. Nepal. Although faculty members from Laurier have been engaged with teacher professional development in Nepal for a number of years, we have recently provided a "made-for-Nepal" framework of the Educator and Leadership Institute. Instead of providing, as we have done in the past, one or two-day workshops, we will provide longer, more intensive courses similar to what we do in Haiti. A team of 10 Canadian educators will be in Nepal in May for three weeks to provide these learning opportunities in urban (Kathmandu) and rural settings. We are partnering with a number of organizations founded in Nepal and this will support the sustainability of the work there. Again, a different iteration of what we have done in Haiti but with equal potential for impact on teacher learning.

We continue to be asked to provide professional development for teachers in other contexts (Ghana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Tanzania, China, etc.) but we are ensuring that we are moving forward in a sustainable manner.