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Teacher Stories Education India Kerri Young having her hand stamped at Mahabalipuram to remind her not to use her left hand Two New Zealand teachers will be selected in July to travel to India at the end of this year on a three-week study tour managed by Australia's Asia Education Foundation (AEF). Janine Chin, schools co-ordinator at the Asia 2000 Foundation, recently returned from a similar tour to India. For several years now, Asia 2000 Foundation of New Zealand has taken part in the AEF's Teacher In-Country Fellowships to Asia (TICFA) program and the experience has been very successful. Teacher's benefit by participating in AEF's extremely well structured program that combines extensive, pre-tour, background information with a variety of experiences, homestays and visits to places in India. Teachers return better equipped to teach their students about life in India as a result of their day-to-day experiences, and with a variety of resources to add to their social studies program. There is no substitute for experiencing yourself the heat, the sounds and smells of India, of living among the people and seeing the vastly different strata of their society, of learning how to cope with insistent hawkers and how to bargain with taxi drivers. No picture book or video is an adequate alternative for these on the spot experiences. Nor can they replace walking along the Ganges and learning about the huge pollution problems that face the authorities. The reason for my involvement was to assess the benefits of the programme and be better able to advise future successful applicants on what to expect in India and what is expected of them on return. Teachers applying for the fellowship need to set out what they want to achieve and indicate how it will benefit their area of teaching. I feel I am now in a better position to offer suggestions concerning objectives that will build on the results of previous participants. My overall hope is that teachers will develop initiatives of their own to promote Asian studies in the classroom. This could be to hold workshops at the local and national level or develop resources that can be shared with others. There is no doubt in my mind about the value of these tours. An AEF survey of the program has shown that while increasing their knowledge, participants also become aware of their ignorance of the country they visit. Participants overestimate their knowledge of a country and seriously under-calculate the learning gap needed to acquire even a rudimentary familiarity with the social, cultural and historical identity of their host country. One result is that many teachers return conscious of the inadequacy of simplistic generalizations about their host country. I can now endorse those views. I feel that the experiences gained from this programme are proving to be a great learning resource for New Zealand's educational process. | More Teacher Stories | Go to the top of the page Contacts Further information on the TICFA program is available from: Ms Kristi Sheldon, Manager, In-Country Programs k.sheldon@asialink.unimelb.edu.au Mr Aaron O'Shannessy, Project Officer, In-County Programs a.oshannessy@asialink.unimelb.edu.au Asia Education Foundation Sidney Myer Asia Centre The University of Melbourne Parkville Victoria 3010 Australia Telephone: 03 8344 4800 Facsimile: 03 9347 1768