In any society, teachers play one of the key roles in shaping young minds and helping them develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes they need for their future lives and careers.
At AFS, we always partner with teachers, first, because we truly appreciate their role in their communities and as educators, but also because we know they are life-long learners who are eager to develop their own competences. Numerous international and local AFS programs thus involve teachers as our key partners in fostering intercultural competence and global citizenship.
Supporting Teachers as a Global Priority
At the recent UN Transforming Education Summit, more than 130 countries committed to rebooting investments in their education systems and accelerating action to end the learning crisis heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Held at the U.N. General Assembly ahead of the annual leaders’ meeting, the Summit called on the world’s nations to prioritize measures to address COVID-19 recovery and get back on track with tackling the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This included acknowledging teachers as the backbone of all good education systems and emphasizing the need for providing them with the conditions, wages, resources, training, autonomy and respect they deserve in order to fulfill their role in transforming education.
AFS Offers Teacher Scholarships and Free Resources
On this World Teachers’ Day, AFS would like to thank teachers worldwide for their hard work and reinforce our commitment to supporting teachers to transform themselves and become agents of change. We invite educators to join a full scholarship program to learn about key concepts and principles of global citizenship education, and how to foster it with their students.
AFS Effect+ for the Classroom is a virtual capacity-building program that aims to equip teachers to introduce students to the UN SDGs and develop lifelong intercultural skills to make progress toward these goals.
The 2022-23 edition of the Effect+ for the Classroom Program includes:
- The 6-week Global Up Educator virtual learning certification, with different start dates (the next ones are already on 15 October and 12 November 2022);
- Access to teaching resources on the SDGs and Active Global Citizenship, tools for self-reflection, monthly live sessions, and connection with other teachers from around the world in a virtual community to share experiences and best practices; and
- The opportunity to get international recognition for a social impact project on the SDGs developed by students with their teachers’ guidance through the 2023 Cyril Taylor Young Leaders Awards.
The program is available only via scholarship award. Applications are now open for the cohort that starts on October 15. For more information about the application and selection process please visit the program webpage.