Paul Smith is a secondary school geography teacher in Bromley, London also director of Teaching and Learning, Bishop Jestus School, UK. He was one of the participant teachers from the UK for British Council’s Connecting Classrooms programme. Here's Mr Smith's experience in his own language :
I am passionate about creating environments where teachers share and talk about learning. I have been teaching for 13 years. I am also a director of teaching and learning within the school.
We visited Bangladesh last month for the British Council Connecting Classroom programme along with 12 other teachers from the UK to meet and exchange knowledge and values with the Bangladeshi teachers. We picked Bangladesh because of its Geographical significance, in terms of its role to play in the region; migrants, China, India and its rapid urbanisation and development opportunities. It also interested us as we felt it was a country that we knew little about but that our country had some influence in its origins and history. Bangladesh was also an interesting choice for us as we currently would not have considered the country as a place to visit; now we would highly recommend the country and Dhaka to friends and family as a place to visit particularly to experience culture and the friendly welcome.
On arrival we were welcomed warmly, not only by our partner teacher but the students, and other staff too. The children had planned a celebration of our arrival in advance and made excellent gifts for us and welcomed us with clapping and the throwing flowers. It was both overwhelming and humbling to have that level of care and thought shown to us.
We whilst spending time at our partner school we were struck with the deep devotion and love shown to the students by the staff, more that 90% of the students in our partner schools were orphans; it was obvious that our school was a large family based community. Technology had recently arrived in our partner school via a charity, 10 laptop computers and networking equipment, we were both reminded that what we take for granted in the UK is not typical all over the World, and experiencing students using a computer for the first time really made us want to ensure students in the UK appreciate their opportunities.
If I am asked to find out the similarities and differences between teachings learning environment of Bangladeshi and the UK schools I would say the UK teaching and learning environment is fortunate due to the budget it receives. The buildings, IT infrastructure, text books, equipment etc cannot be matched currently, but what struck us was the respect that teachers are shown by both their peers and students. Teachers are seen as agents of change and opportunity in Bangladesh. The most important similarity we saw between school systems was the relationships between teachers and students, whether it'd be Christian love in a Church of England school in the UK or Islamic love in a Madrasa in Bangladesh.
One difference we found more challenging was the segregation of girls and boys (and men and women), although we have the grammar and single sex schools in the UK they can mix freely within society. But on the whole in Bangladesh this mixing is not encouraged we both agreed that teaching in this environment would require real thought and care.
However, I would like to share that, the pace of change in Bangladesh is rapid. The growth of Dhaka and surrounding cities such as Gazipur (where our partner school was located) is at times staggering, but the future opportunities that lay ahead for the very students we met in the Madrasa is also staggering. Ten years ago their futures may have been set in stone but now they have a future of choice.
The challenges facing this country are huge and we hope will not be tackled alone, its future leaders, engineers, scientists, teachers and doctors have a huge challenge that we hope they and the rest of the World will face with the same kindness and determination we have seen so much of in Bangladesh.