Research - Case Studies
Ethiopia Teacher Professional Development:
Children's Home Society and Family Services
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia • 24-28 August 2009

Key People and Participants
Participants included approximate sixty teachers and leaders from the three CHSFS Ethiopia  schools, several invited schools, and UNESCO. The training sessions provided an excellent opportunity for networking and collaborating amongst various schools (state and private) and education agencies.

Awol Endis from UNESCO attended the entire week-long training. His interests included how the thinking tools and methods could be used in state schools.

Abraham Amanuel the Director of CHSFS Ethiopia came Monday and Friday. We met from mid Saturday morning through the afternoon for five hours discussing the teacher training and next steps.

Asanake Amanuel the Director of Africa for CHSFS Ethiopia came Wednesday afternoon to the teacher training. We met for dinner on Thursday evening to discuss the training and visions for future trainings.

Jeff Wigren and Alan Bachman of CHSFS in Minneapolis were the liaisons for the teacher training and learning sessions.

Tefera, a journalist with a known TV talk show, is a friend of Ato Asanake, I met with on the evening of 27 August 2009.

Fekadu Negusie, the Principal at Children’s Home Academy which is part of Children’s Home Society and Family Services (CHSFS) Ethiopia coordinated the scheduling of the workshops and was an active participant throughout the week.

Geoffrey Suddreth, General Manager of Thinking Maps^® Inc. — Thank you for providing use of Thinking Maps^® with professional development held at Children's Home Academy, Children's Home Society and Family Services, Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

David Hyerle, founder of Thinking Foundation , and creator of Thinking Maps^® whose insight and support for documenting the Thinking School Model. www.thinkingfoundation.org

Eyob Getahun is the Director of Audio Visual for CHSFS Ethiopia which offers the potential of creating training materials from each of the workshops that can be used by participants for deeper understanding of methods and techniques, for use by new teachers, and other teachers in the field. There could be a connection here with UNESCO as well.

CHSFS Volunteers offer an opportunity to have onsite support to institute the various techniques and methods from the teacher training. Especially threading a ‘common language’ (e.g. visual tools) throughout the school classrooms and with the school leadership. They would be excellent to help develop the Collegial Coaching model. This model is for teachers improving their teaching (pedagogy – art of teaching) which should be done in small groups (minimum of three recommended) without the principal or other leadership present (their presence shifts the focus on improving teaching peer to peer to evaluation). For this to be effective, the volunteers must have a clear vision with their role(s) and how to implement the Collegial Coaching, and/or any other methods and techniques. Erin Sweeney and Kalkidan Tamiru are current volunteers who attended the training and learning sessions.

Several private schools participated in the whole week workshop. Their continued involvement becomes part of the model of CHSFS schools being model laboratory schools.

Robb Blumenreder, Industry Team Manager for Sennheiser for the donation of microphone equipment.

Click here for Pictures of participants.