Staff Reporter
Teachers all across Pakistan attended the Teachers Literature Festival on the second and the last day of the Children Literature Festival (CLF) and shared challenges they faced like communication gap, absence of proper learning facilities and people’s, especially villagers’ lack of interest in their children’s learning.
Experts, academia and members of civil society urged the teachers to motivate children to learn and this they can do by organizing children literature festivals (CLF) at schools.
While addressing 7th Teacher’s Literature Festival (TLF) held at the Federal College of Education here on Wednesday, the Adviser and Founder of the CLF Baela Raza Jamil noted that addressing a large gathering of teachers from across the country was important as teachers were the builders and makers of the nation and through them we can turn our youth into productive members of society.
We hope that teachers will take what they learn from this interaction and implement it to create a more inclusive and creative learning environment for our children, she said.
Some 700 teachers took part in various activities and interactive sessions highlighting challenges they were facing in remote areas of Pakistan and experts helped them overcome those problems and urged them to be more communicative and friendly with their students.
TLF started in 2014 with the Board of Directors of CLF wanting to engage teachers in the process of loving literature as well. Future teachers in training from Federal College of Education eagerly attended the workshops.
Ali Raza started the festival with theatrical Punjabi poetry. The CLF Advisor and Founder of the Children’s Literature Festival (CLF), BaelaRaza Jamil expressed her enthusiasm while saying that “we hope that teachers will take what they learn today and implement it to create a more inclusive and creative learning environment for our children.”
Other resource persons from the day included; Sehrish Farooq, Fizza Abbas, InamElahi, Aamna Khan and Ali Raza.
The festival started off with a motivational warm up session by Khadijah Bakhtiar, words of appreciation and encouragement by Nargis Sultana – Country Director Open Society Foundations and short Punjabi poetry recital by Nasreen Iqbal.
“This is such a fruitful platform to train the teachers and encourage them to pass on the information, not only to students but other teachers and school management as well,” said the teachers attending from Federal College of Education.
Not only teachers but general visitors, students and media also attended various sessions including Art of Storytelling session by Oxford University Press (OUP), Role of teachers in the protection of children by Samina Sardar of British Council, Digital learning and STEAM sessions by Taleemabad, Oxbridge and Teletaleem how to do a CLF in your school by CLF/ITA team, critical thinking: 3 Cs by Knowledge Platform, Recycling Activities by Waste Hero.
Country Director Open Society Foundations Nargis Sultana on the occasion said TLF was a critical part of the social movement on re-framing education and learning as well as creating content for meaningful education in Pakistan.
