• Making Change Happen
• Thinking: Quality Education
• Thinking Schools Tigray Ethiopia

October 2015 Thinking Schools Ethiopia:  Tigray Trainings
Thinking Schools stage 2 professional development will continue this month with Growing Thinking Schools. The trainers include Robert Seth Price (Thinking Schools International Global Trainer), Atsede Tsehayou & Dagim Melese (Thinking Schools Ethiopia – TSE) and coordinated by Tesfay Nassr Mohammed (Tigray Development Association – TDA):

• 12-15 October 2015: there will be professional development with 72 Trainer of Trainers for the 36 model laboratory schools. The schools represent 12 Woredas with 2 primary and 1 secondary school from each Woreda. Previously 8 teachers and schools leaders from the 36 model laboratory schools (288 educators) received 2 days of Growing Thinking Schools training. The Trainer of Trainers coming from this group will include one woman and one man teacher from each school. The funding from Sida administered by Initiative Africa is for whole school change with a focus on empowerment and equality for girls. This training and others listed here will be in Wukro, Tigray. The Training will be facilitated by Robert Seth Price (Thinking Schools International – TSI), Atsede Tsehayou & Dagim Melese (Thinking Schools Ethiopia – TSE) and coordinated by Tesfay Nassr Mohammed (Tigray Development Association – TDA).

• 

  16-17 October 2015:   professional development with ALL teachers from ALL model laboratory schools in the Wukro region. The Trainer of Trainers will collaborate with the global TSI trainer, the TSE trainers, and the TDA project coordinator. There will be 450 teachers participating with the 2 day training.

• 19-20 October 2015:  professional development with ALL teachers from ALL model laboratory schools in the Shire region. The Trainer of Trainers will collaborate with the global TSI trainer, the TSE trainers, and the TDA project coordinator. There will be 250 teachers participating with the 2 day training.
• 22-23 October 2015:  professional development with ALL teachers from ALL model laboratory schools in the Aksum region. The Trainer of Trainers will collaborate with the global TSI trainer, the TSE trainers, and the TDA project coordinator. There will be 250 teachers participating with the 2 day training.

Thinking Schools Ethiopia:  Tigray is a collaboration of:

• Tigray Education Bureau (TEB) and Tigray Development Association (TDA)
  &
• Thinking Schools International (TSI) and Thinking Foundation (TF)
  &
• Swedish International Cooperation Agency funding with Initiative Africa administering

The Thinking Schools whole school, whole system change model focuses on foundational pedagogical teaching practices that are life long thinking and problem solving methods (see below in this posting and throughout earlier postings).

The Thinking Schools Ethiopia project in Tigray continues with Stage 2 Trainings this month, October 2015, in three Tigray locations in Ethiopia.

The Thinking Schools Ethiopia: Tigray project:

• Connecting through social media
  social media brings key people together (TDA communications director Weldeslasie Reta
  and TSI global trainer Robert Seth Price  which then connected TDA executive director Dr. Taddele Hagos with Robert). Three weeks after the initial contact a training took place in Mekelle, Tigray, Ethiopia.
• Introduction to Growing Thinking Schools Training

  

  In 2014 the Tigray Education Bureau team is trained by TSI Global Trainer Robert Seth Price and his TSE colleagues Atsede Tsehayou and Dagim Melese in a 2 day Growing Thinking Schools Inside Out training held in Mekelle. Robert, Atsede and Dagim have collaborated for 5 years including trainings with thousands of educators in SNNPRS, Addis Ababa and Tigray.

• Stage 1
  In April 2015 thirty six (36) model laboratory schools are selected from 12 Woredas with 2 primary and 1 secondary schools from each Woreda. Each school selects eight key educators to participate in a 2 day Growing Thinking Schools trainings held in Shire, Aksum and Wukro. Aksum and Mekelle university professors also participated.
• Stage 2
  October 2015:  two Trainer of Trainers from each of the 36

  

  model laboratory schools (one woman teacher and one man teacher to be consistent with the focus of whole school change including girl/woman empowerment for a total of 72 Trainer of Trainers) will receive 4 days of intensive training to build on their initial 2 days of training in April. Then they will collaborate with the TSI and TSE trainers to train ALL the teachers from all 36 model laboratory schools in three trainings which are two days each in Wukro, Aksum and Shire.

• Stage 3, Stage 4, Sustaining
  Future stages include:
  —regular site visits from TSE lead trainers to support the school site Trainer of Trainers;
  —use of video to create a library of ‘models of excellence’ to share locally and regionally;
  —collaboration with Mekelle and Aksum Universities for accreditation and action research (see www.thinkingfoundation.org);
  —scaling the model to all schools in each Woreda and throughout the region

Quality change in education benefits from:

• a quality education model that focuses on foundational pedagogical processes
• understanding the brain seeks patterns and the importance of collaborating with models of excellence
• focusing on building the ‘foundations’ first
• knowing and understanding change is a movement. A movement of change fast enough for the whole to see and implement.
• a movement is the whole village collaborating, together in the best interests of the children, of family, the health care of the whole community.

Key acronyms:

• TDA – Tigray Development Association
• TEB – Tigray Education Bureau
• TSI – Thinking Schools International
• TSE – Thinking Schools Ethiopia
• TF – Thinking Foundation

The Tigray model:

• social media brings key people together (TDA communications director and TSI global trainer -> TDA executive director and TSI global trainer)
• training for the whole team of 80+ Tigray education experts from the regions education bureau. The training is facilitated by the TSI trainer and 2 lead TSE trainers.
• selecting 36 laboratory model schools representing 12 Woredas which are typically collected together into zones, which form a region. Each Woreda will have 2 primary and 1 secondary laboratory schools. The regions key universities, Mekelle and Aksum will be active participants. The trainings of the schools is divided into 3 cluster areas:  Shire, Aksum, Wukro.
• training for the leadership teams comprised of 8 people from each school including principals and key teacher leaders
• training of 2 trainer of trainers from each school. The funding (from SIDA and administered through Initiative Africa) from this project focuses on whole school change and girl empowerment as a focus of the change. There will be one woman and one man teacher from each school as the trainer of trainers. The complete teaching and leadership staffs will be trained together in collaboration with the ‘trainer of trainers’.

The Thinking Schools approach is a whole school transformational design that requires minimal materials for implementation and use. What is needed are school leaders, teachers, students and parents immersed in understanding the methods of Thinking Schools Ethiopia pathways for thinking. Thinking Schools Ethiopia focuses on key methods and pathways that aim at the professional development of teachers to improve the quality of their pedagogy and decision-making. This mindset and practice successfully brings a student centered quality thinking education with the whole school environment through the use of:

• Thinking Maps
  use of visual tools to organize ones thinking (students, teachers, leaders) with visual tools that are a visual verbal collaborative process of seeing each other’s thinking
• Reflective Questioning
  high quality questioning, listening and discussion skills
• Collaborative Learning
  collaborative learning for students; collegial coaching for teachers; community building for the whole school
• Thinking Environments
  how are space (structure and the educators presence) and materials (local and recycled) used with intentionality
• Dispositions
  a mind that is reflective about internal dispositions and actions, while remaining open to other ways in which people are thinking and acting

Thinking Schools Ethiopia is a whole school systems approach based on building capacity inside out with the aim of developing a foundation that is reflective, sustainable, collaborative and replicable. TSE is part of a greater global collaboration that supports multi-directional development. Multi-directional development is a belief system and model where all participants recognize their own capacity for aiding the others globally: ideas and innovation originate within and across ALL places globally. The Thinking Schools Ethiopia training uses research based thinking methods that are lifelong skills for use with problem solving in school, life and work.

If you would like to know more or are interested in attending a training please contact:

• Robert Seth Price (TSI Global Trainer)
  website:  www.eggplant.org
  email:  robert@eggplant.org
  Viber:  +1 323.397.0630
  Skype:  robertsethprice
• Atsede Tsehyou (TSE Country Trainer)
  Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 0912192667
• Dagim Melese (TSE Country Trainer)
  Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 0912102276