|
Demand for educational services is
at its highest in the UAE. Nowhere is this as visible as
in the emirate of Dubai, which attracts a growing number
of expatriates each year and boasts a large number of
young nationals eager to face the challenges of a
booming economy.
The Al
Habtoor Group, through the Dubai-based Emirates
International School (EIS), has been at the forefront of
efforts to bring world-class educational standards into
the UAE. Al Shindagah Magazine caught up with EIS
Director Robert Bennett, who shares the secret of the
school’s success, sheds light on other Al Habtoor Group
community projects currently in the pipeline, and
explains why innovation should be a key word for
educators.
“Many
problems in the world would be more easily resolved if
those people involved had broader and more formal
educational background,” says Robert Bennett towards the
end of our conversation. We have spent almost two hours
discussing the field, which has been Bennett’s passion
for some 35 years. Having previously worked as an
educator in Germany, Turkey, Italy and his native USA,
Bennett brings in valuable experience to Emirates
International School, where teachers from over 30
different countries are working with a student body
representing over 80 different nations of the world.
“If we are going to help solve global problems,
certainly a great place to start should be with this
student population”.
The efforts
of the classroom teachers seem to be recognised among
Dubai’s community members, as Emirates International
School’s student long waiting list for the current
academic year indicates. This fact augurs well for Al
Habtoor Group’s other community service projects,
including a new school currently being built in Dubai’s
Meadows complex as well as additional facilities now in
the planning stages. The Al Habtoor Group realizes
there are not enough quality schools and will continue
to develop quality programs.
According
to Bennett, it is the school’s high standards that set
it apart in the community. High accountability for both,
staff and students is the key principle. EIS seems also
to provide expatriate children with a rare opportunity
to get to know the Middle East and its culture. About 15
per cent of pupils come from countries in the region,
including the UAE, while planned activities such as
trips to local cultural sights and even neighbouring
countries also enable students to interact with the
local environment. “We operate as an International
School, but still include the local cultures and
traditions, helping our visiting students better
understand the local way of life.”
While there
is much to commend EIS and its team, Bennett wants to
raise the bar even higher. According to him, there is a
great need for innovation in the field, not only in the
Middle East, but also in the rest of the world.
“The model
of education generally used in many parts of the world
is over 100 years old, we need to have a greater focus
on student learning,” says Bennett. While the current
mode of education traces its roots and follows the logic
of the early industrial age, society has changed
drastically in the last two centuries. Means of mass
communication, international travel and technologies
such as the Internet have changed the way people
interact and do business. According to Bennett,
educators have some catching up to do. “Educational
Practices should model the societies we are living in.”
Teaching methods that matched an older, traditional way
of life have to be reviewed to make sure that the
students that graduate are prepared for the challenges
and requirements of an every changing society.
“Young
people now are being bombarded with so many stimuli,”
says Bennett. “ In an information age, where young
people have ample access to news, entertainment and
international travel and when various viewpoints on a
variety of issues are available through different media,
we can no longer say that one way is the right way”, he
claims. “ We as educators have to have the skills to
help child sort through all this stimuli and separate
the bad from the good.
“Education
should be more of a process than a product,” he says.
While many teachers focus on whether their students have
memorised a particular sets of information, the real
emphasis needs to be on encouraging critical thinking
and problem-solving.
“In many
schools, the math teacher will give a test and ask his
students to just put the answers on a piece of paper,”
continues Bennett. “A child could have worked for a
lengthy period of time to develop the correct answer,
making a very simple mistake, yet for the teacher a
wrong answer would mean a complete failure.”
Viewing
learning as a process rather than a product means it is
no longer the sole responsibility of the teacher. “The
teacher is responsible for the environment in which
learning takes place but the learning should be the
responsibility of the individual child,” says Bennett. “
A major fault could be that we as educators do too much
for children and do not teach them the antimony to make
decisions and be responsible for their own learning.
“Self and
peer evaluation should play an important role in the
learning process”, Bennett claims. “ When it comes to
writing, for example, a great way to teach children how
to write is to let them see good and bad samples of
writing so that they could compare and contrast.
“I had the
opportunity to observe an English language teacher that
brought the papers of her 11th grade students
into her 7th grade English class and she gave
them the simple directions to read all the papers and
put them in four groups,” says Bennett. “The number one
group had papers that didn’t make sense and weren’t
clear versus the number four group, in which the papers
were very easy to follow, interesting to read, had a
good introduction, a good body and a great concluding
statement,” he says adding, “When the children have
these examples posted in the room, they don’t have to
turn their paper in to find out what grade they’ll get,
they can grade it themselves.
“Education
should not be a secret, there should be no surprises,”
Bennett says. According to him, rather than having
students guessing what will be on the test or guess
what’s on the teacher’s mind, there should be clearly
understood communication and clearly understood
outcomes. Exams and assessment should then be given when
students are ready to be successful, not when the
teacher says “it’s Wednesday and time for a test!”
While the
approach to teaching needs a revision, so does the
academic calendar. “We have an educational system now
that has locked holidays in that are not directly
related to the learning process,” he says. “ The summer
holiday, for example, was designed 200 years ago so that
children could go home and help harvesting the crops.
Children do need a break but I am not advocating this
long period of time that we currently give them,” says
Bennett. “We spend a tonne of energy teaching children
in the first grades how to read and we achieve a very
high readability rate by the end of the school year only
to find out they have dropped almost half a year by the
end of the summer.”
The above
is especially true for students for whom English is a
second language. “They work so hard to get to a
particular point but if that learning is not
re-enforced, it goes away,” says Bennett. “We are going
to do some research this year into the reading levels of
children that have English as a second language versus
those for who English is a first language. There could
be some implications that we could share with other
international schools.”
According
to Bennett, education should put a greater emphasis on
the individual. “One of the things that concerns me most
about education is that we chronologically group
children, mostly for the convenience of the educators
and the school, rather than the developmental levels of
the children,” he says.
A
standards-based instructional programme can address this
issue by providing a benchmark with minimum requirements
in each curricular area that children will be expected
to cover. According to Bennett, teachers need to assess
where each pupil is in the beginning of the school year
and then set up individual goals for each student to
achieve.
In the
day-to-day functioning of a school, this translates into
making sure teachers pay attention to all the students
in a class. “When I evaluate teachers in the classroom,
I will note how many times a teacher has made personal
interaction with each child. I’m going to expect the
teacher to acknowledge every one of them at least once.”
says Bennett.
An
individualised approach to education also means that
teachers acknowledge the fact that children learn
differently. Various activities need to be incorporated
into a lecture to cater to the different senses of
students – hearing and vision are the norm, but why not
include senses of touch, smell and taste. And don’t
forget that sixth sense and we all choose to use at the
appropriate time.
A
personalised approach to teaching allows teachers to
work with and understand students emotional and social
maturity levels. “We work very hard in the academic
arena to prepare children for the higher maths and the
sciences but seldom do we get reports of somebody being
fired from their position because they couldn’t do the
work, what they are fired for is they didn’t get along
with people, they didn’t show up on time, they couldn’t
meet deadlines,” says Bennett, explaining why teachers
need to also promote the social and emotional
development of children.
“Parents
should expect us, and I think we are doing a pretty good
job here at EIS, to provide children with the tools to
help them make the right decisions about whatever
vocation they go into,” he says.
“Ultimately, for children to grow up into successful
people, they need to have a sound level of emotional
stability and be socially adaptable to different types
of environments”, says Bennett. “ In an ever smaller and
more globalised world, tolerance and the ability to
understand different people, cultures and situations are
an asset. A good education is one that encourages
children to be problem solvers, to ask questions and to
be an advocate for themselves from an early age”.
| 
