Post-pandemic events have revealed the significance of upskilling teachers. Keeping this in mind, the International Teachers’ Olympiad 2022, a multinational Olympiad for teachers, was recently announced to support teachers’ continuous growth and professional development. This is a dramatic shift in the educational ecology by refocusing the Olympiad on teachers rather than students–giving them a chance, for the first time ever, to determine their core skills & competencies.
The Olympiad is expected to draw participation from 100,000 teachers of various nationalities across the globe. The goal is to determine the effectiveness of teaching practices across global teaching standards & empower teachers for hybrid classrooms, the changing modalities, evolved pedagogies, and innovative practices.
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Teachers participating in the Olympiad would be able to assess their state & national level position with their percentile scores. They will also get a personalized analysis of their pedagogy skills and a 6-month action plan with expert recommendations from international teacher educators. This will ensure that all students at all levels of education are taught by qualified, professionally trained, and well-equipped teachers in line with the National Professional Standards for Teachers (NPST), recommendations made in NEP 2020, and with international teaching practices across the globe.
Suraasa (Les Transformations), the organizer of the event, has announced that the registration for the Olympiad will begin on the 1st of September, & will be open to in-service, retired as well as aspiring teachers to participate. The teacher upskilling platform also claimed that top teachers from the Olympiad will win cash prizes as well.
As much as it helps teachers, the Olympiad also comes as a blessing for schools struggling to map a professional development plan for their teachers. Schools will get a separate report with aggregated, overall scores of all their teachers combined along with an action plan for enhancing student achievement & engagement in their classrooms. This will help them as well as their teachers to approach professional development & growth in a more data-aware manner.
Rishabh Khanna, leading Cognitive Scientist and Suraasa CEO shares his thoughts about the Olympiad, “Teachers are highly underappreciated and underrated. We believe that the International Teachers’ Olympiad will go a long way in getting them the much-deserved recognition by highlighting their expertise in the world. It will act as a tool for teachers to discover their true teaching potential by identifying their individual strengths and giving them a concrete plan of action to achieve their goals.”
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This might be one of the many new initiatives that would propel the country to the global forefront of education by diagnosing the problem as well as delivering remedies to direct stakeholders. At the same time, it also puts deserving teachers under the limelight catapulting the teaching profession at the heart of education transformation.
