Our program thrives on a regular exchange. While the tandems regularly meet up privately as needed, there are also additionally scheduled joint meetings once or twice a month, in which the students either learn important soft skills in workshops or simply take some time to exchange thoughts and ideas or reflect on current topics in our so-called House Sessions.
In the October House Session, Markus Cslovjecsek – professor at the FHNW in Switzerland – introduced us to the topic of “21st Century Teacher Skills”. What skills will teachers need in ten, twenty, or thirty years? What will the world and the school of tomorrow look like? And who can tell us? Where can we find answers to these questions?
Inspired by a video of a TED talk on the topic of “Changing Education Paradigms”, the students got confronted with this one essential question that would accompany us throughout the session: “How do we educate our children to take their place in the economies of the 21st century?”
Through talking about and reflecting on this important topic our student teachers got to think way ahead into their future and talk about all the challenges and possibilities that will arise with the career path that they chose. They started to collect important issues that they will need to consider when teaching in a diverse classroom setting in the years to come and exchanged different perspectives, finding similarities and differences in their education systems.
The students realized that there are no specific answers and no perfect solutions to their questions but with an open mind and motivation, there is nothing that can stop them from becoming great teachers in an advancing society.
