Our Story

The Problem is...

there are limited resources for educators in the context of non-formal and informal learning for displaced students due to forced migration (asylum seekers and refugees), that capture the unique situation these learners are in and the challenges the educators face when trying to support their learning needs. As a result, educators who are already overworked and thinly stretched are spending valuable time and energy sifting through countless resources designed for formal educators and adapting them to meet their students’ needs. Since this is often done in silos, it is not captured, recorded or shared, making it difficult to build on the collective knowledge of one’s peer group. All the hard and creative work done in this context is being lost.

Our Proposed Solution is...

to build an online platform (open and crowdsourced) where educators from the field can share lesson/project/activity ideas, inspiration, and provide on-going peer support.

We Believe…

sharing experiences with peers not only saves educators time and energy on planning lessons and designing learning experiences but increases the quality of the learning as well. This will build a more collaborative community, reduce work stress, increase confidence for inexperienced educators, help educators transfer what they learn in trainings into practice and ultimately improve their "facilitation of learning" overall.

Our Teaching context:

We, as a community, are trying to meet the unique needs of our students. We are helping to facilitate learning by creating safe spaces where they can heal, learn and grow. This is not always easy. It takes knowledge about trauma-informed teaching, facilitation of social-emotional learning, creative classroom management strategies, alternative learning methodologies, understanding basic child development, formative assessment tools, and lots of trial and error. But it also requires us to look closer at our role as facilitators who are guiding the learner towards learning, rather than teaching them knowledge that they do not have. Therefore, we wanted to see if we can capture all of this invaluable experience gained by practice in the field into transferable lesson/activity plans which can illustrate the HOW behind the WHAT and WHY. That way, all the key components to teaching in this context are already embedded into your planning, helping to guide and improve your practice. We want lessons from the field that have been developed and tested by educators who understand the context and all that needs to go into facilitating a safe, meaningful, and relevant learning experience. Educators in this context can finally share their stories of their own learning as well as the learning of their students that drives the improvement of practice in this context. We are on a learning journey together.

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