By Hira Nafees Shah

Prominent educator Nazeer Ahmed had noticed a trend during his years of teaching in his home district Pishin, Balochistan. Students would complete matriculation from schools but would drop out during their college years. When he inquired, Ahmed found out that the coursework upto to the level of Metric in Pishin, was in Urdu, but the syllabus for all subjects in college was in English.

With limited comprehension of the foreign language, students felt frustrated so that they preferred to discontinue their education, instead of mastering the new language. Dejected by seeing some of the brightest pupils giving up on their studies, Ahmed decided to take matters in his own hands. He set up the first English language learning center in Pishin and also worked as an English Access Micro-Scholarship Program teacher for two years.

Eventually he was rewarded for his efforts and went to the United States for an E-Teacher Professional Development Workshop at the University of Oregon, as part of the E-Teacher Scholarship Program. Learn more about the program at http://exchanges.state.gov/non-us/program/e-teacher-scholarship-program.

“I was the only Pakistani selected in a group of 620 people,” he said. “It was a very good experience and I gave a presentation on how to teach English in developing countries like Pakistan.”

Ahmed also learned how to make a project on English language teaching and implement it in his home country.

Upon his return to Pakistan, the alumnus put what he had learned in action and applied for a $5,000 Alumni Small Grant. All alumni of various U.S sponsored exchange programs in Pakistan are eligible to apply for the grant to enable them to give back to their communities.

The project consisted of two workshops spanning a period of two weeks from April to May 2014, one for female teachers and the other for male instructors. About 60 participants took part in the trainings and learned how to incorporate the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing in their lectures, so that their pupils could become better English language learners.

“This is the first teacher training workshop of its kind ever in Pishin, Balochistan,” said Ahmad. “I decided to train the teachers so that they could implement the new strategies that they had learned, in their classrooms.”

Some of the activities involved role playing, listening to songs and repeating their words or finding out the correct pronunciation of words through the Internet. Ahmed primarily used English language teaching manuals from the State Department and Voice of America.

Lubna Khalid has been a lecturer in Pishin for four years and is currently teaching at a government school. She says the workshop was exceptional and educators had not been provided with such a platform before in the province.

“Through this project, our style of teaching has changed, and now students are participating more in the classes and their confidence level has increased,” she said.

Another professor, Ahmed Khan has also noticed a change in his students after he used some of the activities that he had been taught in the workshop.

“My students can speak English much better now as compared to the past,” he said. “Vocabulary used to be difficult for them so I would only write down words and their meanings on the blackboard, but now I let them make sentences.”

Khan also stated that before he had to do all the work in the class, but now he only has to give his students guidelines through which they form groups and initiate activities on their own, which in turn lead to greater learning. As for the next step, he hopes to launch a similar project in Quetta in the future, so as to benefit the teachers in that area.

“The best moment from the project was when I was given a chance to speak before the other participants,” said another workshop participant Mohammad Musa. “Before I did not use to be so confident, but now I can deliver knowledge without any hesitation.”

Farzana Alam, a middle school teacher applauded the workshop for its exclusive focus on providing English language instruction to female teachers.

“I have attended a number of workshops before, but this was the first workshop in which the focus was only on English and the methodologies associated with it,” she said. “This was also the first workshop which focused primarily on women and we learned so much that we have asked Ahmed to conduct more trainings.”

Another participant, Aziz-ur-Rehman says seeing the reaction of his students was priceless, after he modified his teaching method.

“I received a very good response from my class, when I applied the new English teaching strategies,” he said. “Infact now my class has become famous in the entire school!”