February 16, 2015 – Global Peace Foundation facilitated a professional teacher development workshop to 25 teachers at Kamiti Secondary School in Nairobi.
Kamiti Secondary School is one of the demonstration schools nominated for quality CCI implementation. Through the guidance of Global Peace Education’s CCI program, the teachers have been able to re-evaluate and redefine the school core values, mission, vision, and motto geared towards improving their school culture.
The workshop began with a brief introduction from the innovation teacher Mrs. Florence Mudenya,who is also the Innovation Team Leader for CCI in the school. Mr. Kogocho, the school’s Deputy Principal, also urged teachers to embrace the integration of character and creativity as part of regular curriculum coverage in the classroom.
The Director for Education Initiatives, Ms. Caroline Amollo took the participants through the main objective of integrating Character and Creativity in classroom, saying that creativity must become relevant to classrooms today. She emphasized on major aspects that should be incorporated into the teaching subjects to ensure it molds students into morally upright and innovative young people who execute leadership in their areas of responsibility.
“CCI aims at promoting character traits such as honesty, respect and responsibility in students. It prepares students to become leaders who can express themselves without fear,” she said, recapping the importance of CCI in refining the behavior of youths.
In groups, the teachers had a chance to participate in discussions that enabled them reflect on their relationships with the school’s administration, their jobs and the students.
These discussions led to the sharing of diverse ideas on how to use best practices to improve school culture, for example, community service, one shilling initiative where by the students save money to help care for the welfare of others, ‘talking tree’ where the norms and values of the school can be written on trees around the compound and other environmental activities to help youth develop into responsible citizens.
“I commend the Global peace Foundation for continued work in transforming education and urge our innovation teams to continue supporting this noble course,” concluded the Deputy Principal at the end of the workshop.