a teacher of Mathematics and Geography at Chitamba Day Secondary School in Zambia

I have been a professional Teacher for 15 years engaged in various departments and my experience has helped a lot learner in inculcating the knowledge and skills that has made them excel in life and lead positive lives.

Zambia has been moving forward in achieving sustainable development especially in education, but this development cannot take place by itself minus learning from different countries through educational forums as the education system of Zambia is undergoing a lot of challenges.

Generally, the education system in Zambia is manly depends on teaching learners on how to write and pass the examinations, without impart learners with relevance skills and knowledge which learners can use for a life time survival. Instead we teach learners for a white collar jobs such as lawyers, teachers, accountants, doctors and among others jobs. Without bearing in minds that it is not only those good jobs which can make a learner succeed in life.  As we are aware Zambia is undergoing a period of deep economic and social crisis characterized by increasing urban and rural poverty; hunger and malnutrition; unemployment and underemployment and a large gap in incomes between haves and have-nots. It is noted that, Zambia as a country can learn and develop through the interaction, exchanging of knowledge and technology advances from countries likes the United States of America, Germany, Poland, Italy among others countries being the best leading nations in the world in terms of education development and technological advances in different areas of development.

With this said, every educator has different expectations from learners, often a reflection of their perception of these learners. Some learners are perceived by teachers as abler than others, that is, more skilled, more proficient, and more competent; while other learners are seen as less proficient. Hence as a teacher, in order to overcome some of the challenges in the education system I integrate the teaching methods with the real life situations and incorporate with entrepreneurship skills so that children are able to tell what will make them successful in life.

Moreover, the government of Zambia have introduced the entry policy which is working very well as it is bring back the pregnant girl back into the education system after the delivery and this has been seen to be the best policy in the country as most of the girls have gone back into schools. As a result, to avoid early marriages among girl child.

Given this opportunity for 2019 International Pedagogical Forum, I’m expecting to open more engagement linkages with other teaching practitioners across the globe will come and attend this forum enable me acquire and gain knowledge through shared best practices, experiences and method being used by others in delivering quality education to learners, enhance relevant skills by using the newly concepts learnt through interaction with different people from different countries. The educational will play an important role in educating me in a practical and interacting manner. This also will help me to learn through visual experience through exploring new things and ideas. Meaning that seeing something in real life than something that we simply read in books.

Therefore, given this chance or an opportunity to participate in this forum, will relate me to the academics learnt much better. Not only that, it will help me to learn the cultural diversity which other countries went through in terms of development transitions. For that it will help me learn new ideas which will help change some Zambian cultures which mainly concentrates on punishment instead of learning new innovations and ideas through the interactions with other people from all walks of life. This will also give me an opportunity to exchange values, skills, norms and ethics.

Furthermore, it will enable me learn how children learn and compare it with Zambia where most schools especially the rural parts where the teaching and learning materials are inadequate and poor as compared to the developed countries. Not only that, in Zambia the education system is not good in terms of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in most schools hence this will help me to open up with their system in terms of technological aspect.

Lastly Zambia will be a much better place if it continues to interact with other developed countries to foster the development of education, innovation and technological advance and this is the only possible way if people travel to learn firsthand information. Therefore, the Zambian education system in particular Chitamba secondary school would learn and better the lives of every learner from things they would learn if given an opportunity to participate in this important globe event. In this regard, I believe that I would utilize the knowledge and skills that I will gain from this educational forum and contribute to the development of Zambia through the control of the ever increasing issues in the education sector.