Great aspirations
LEAP works with partners in South Africa and the United States, to make teaching aspirational and accessible for young graduates. With the second annual Aspiring Teachers Summit, the Ed-Tech Summit reaching 700 teachers and the continued growth of the LEAP Future Leaders Programme, we are making good progress in developing leaders in education.
LEAP continued and expanded its work with long-time partner Teach With Africa and recently sponsored the second annual Aspiring Teachers Summit at the King School in Johannesburg. The summit convened student-teachers, instructional leaders, and young teachers from schools throughout the South African Extraordinary Schools Coalition for a three-day event full of professional development, seminars, and workshops to improve their instructional practices. Plans are already underway for next year’s event to be held at Lebone College that aims to expand the scope to include a leadership dimension for school managers and principals.
Building on its success from last year, the Ed-Tech Summit South Africa grew its reach and depth to train over 700 teachers across five cities: Cape Town, Johannesburg, Jane Furse, East London, and Durban. Educators from the United States and Croatia joined a team of South African teachers and technicians as they travelled the country for two weeks providing workshops on 21st century skills, technology and instructional strategies. Each conference ended with a “tech giveaway” where attendees entered a lottery to win laptops, laser pointers, cameras, and other multimedia equipment and software to use in their classrooms.
The Future Leaders Programme, with 31 student-teachers currently enrolled, is also seeing growth. Coalition partner schools COSAT and Inanda Seminary has worked with LEAP to replicate the successes of the program on their campuses. LEAP, in collaboration with TWA and SAESC, also seek to expand the number of opportunities for young teachers to travel to the US as part of TWA’s internship program. The internship places student-teachers at high performing American high schools for a one-month instructional training and cultural immersion experience. Work is underway to expand the internship program beyond San Francisco with the possibility of host schools in Chicago, New York, Boston and Washington, DC.
