Omnia Education Partnerships is in charge of designing, facilitating and managing the Acting as an Innovator program in Palestine, implemented by Qaddumi Foundation under its Khutwa initiative. The program focuses on unleashing a development mindset among Palestinian teachers, and aims to empower 400 Palestinian teachers from the West Bank and Gaza over the course of three years, and spark a positive and innovative digitally inclined development mindset among teachers in Palestine. During the programme, the teachers are equipped with tangible tools to help spark their imagination to identify challenges in their learning environment, and design and develop solutions to the challenges in the form of powerful and impactful learning projects with a digital dimension. In this way, impact is maximised throughout the entire learning ecosystem.
Acting as an Innovator focuses on teachers as the primary and essential agents in the educational process; they work on the front lines on a daily basis, and therefore are best placed to identify challenges within their learning environment. Through the program, participants will develop innovative projects with a digital dimension, aimed at offering solutions to the challenges highlighted during the Covid-19 global crisis. All projects are implemented within the participants’ immediate learning communities. Encouraging the teachers themselves to engage in this type of thinking and digital experimentation allows for the type of bottom-up change that is so crucial to overall educational reform, which cannot happen through a top-down process alone. While a top-down approach is necessary for processes, it can’t bring innovation which can only come from the people who are involved in the day-to-day of education.
Acting as an Innovator helps teachers embrace an innovation mindset through taking part in interactive online workshops, mentoring from experienced educators, and developing and implementing their projects on the ground. In addition, it follows a “Training of Trainers” approach whereby selected members of each cohort receive the additional guidance necessary to become mentors and certified trainers themselves and deliver the program to subsequent cohorts. The Finnish experts from OEP will train the first group of trainers, and they in turn will train following group of trainers and mentors, and so on.
“This program help me in how to plan well, manage time, and demonstrate the importance of cooperation with local community institutions in supporting the educational process and pushing it forward.”
“The program made me a better observer, to notice a challenge and suggest a solution to it, then try this solution and reflect on the experience and try to make it better the next time.”
Get to know the projects of the graduates of the first Acting as an Innovator program:
Participating teachers’ impressions of the first Acting as an Innovator program:
“The training allowed me to rediscover myself as an innovative teacher; it helped me to leave my comfort zone and break some of the limits that were obstacles more than facilitators.”
“This program had a great role in developing my thinking. I became more aware that the educational process is not limited to the teacher only, but the student has the greatest role. The teacher is a mentor and guide, and the student is the researcher and he is the critic.”
“I learnt to dare to try things and accept that failure is an essential part of the learning process.”