Recent Posts
The world’s best teacher in the world says schools should focus less on test results and more on making lessons fun.
That’s the recipe for turning out better people, according to Palestinian Hanan Al-Hroub, current holder of the Global Teacher Prize.
“Teachers matter. We define the quality of the generations of the future,” she said at the World Government Summit in Dubai.
Al-Hroub was invited to address the global gathering of politicians and policy makers following her win of the world’s top educator award for teaching Palestinian refugee children impacted by violence to turn away from violence and focus on the joy of learning in order to improve their behavior and attitude.
Hanan Al-Hroub winning the Global Teacher Prize in 2016, photo via Instagram/@giovanipalestinesi.italia
It was a controversial award as her husband, Omar Al-Hroub, was convicted in 1980 of being an accomplice in a bomb attack which killed six Israelis. In a statement, award organizers the Varkey Foundation said, “The judging process examines the qualities and achievements of the candidates themselves only.”
At the Dubai summit, she said, “I try to use my classroom to help children forget the negative emotions of fear and hatred that they experience outside class to positive emotions of fun, respect and confidence in the classroom.”
Hoping the same approach can work globally, she added,“I urge policy makers to embrace change. Now is the time for it.”
The change she wants to see worldwide is more personalized attention to the students and less reliance on a system that places a premium on exam results.
She argued that education is about more than relaying facts to achieve high test scores, it’s about nurturing young hearts and minds too. “A teacher’s role is not just to share knowledge but to also impart values,” Al-Hroub told her audience.
After the speech she explained her philosophy to ENTITY. “It’s to instill in children the values of humanity and ethics, like respect, love and tolerance, accepting others equality. Violence is not an option for children to express their anger or impose their opinion or control others. The power of play frees them from fear so that fear does not turn into hatred and violence and instead courage and boldness and power.”
The World Government Summit sees representatives of 139 countries gathering in Dubai to find solutions to a range of challenges facing the planet, including environmental and education issues.
